Neon Genesis Evangelion Evolution: Part III
by sentinel28II
Summary: FINALLY UPDATED! Riana wakes up. She's alive, which means Zeruel's defeated. All's right with the world, except something is very wrong. Yui Ikari is not supposed to be alive... Last chapter of this story arc. New one begins soon!
1. Blood and Fire

**_NEON GENESIS EVANGELION: EVOLUTION  
BOOK III_**

 ** _An Evangelion Fanfic in Many Parts_**

 ** _By Sentinel 28II (aka Sentinel 28A)_**

 _AUTHOR'S NOTES: Welcome to the next chapter of Riana's story! I'm glad you've stuck with the story so far. My updates aren't quite as fast as they were before, but I have less time to work on it these days. Nonetheless, I'm going to stay as regular as I can. My intention is to divide up this saga into several "books" so the story doesn't become too unwieldy (or more unwieldy than it already is)._

 _A tip of several hats for inspiration on this chapter (besides the forever hat tip to Hideaki Anno and Gainax for such a memorable universe to play in): Stephen King, Garth Ennis, and George Patton-which is quite the selection of individuals._

 _Now strap yourselves in and drink the LCL, because the ride begins again._

* * *

 _WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE: With two battles against the Angels under her belt, Riana Arashikaze can now be legitimately called an Eva pilot—even if her comparatively primitive EVA-03A lacks an AT-Field. She has forged bonds of genuine comradeship with Shinji Ikari and Rei Ayanami, and earned at least the respect of Asuka Langley-Soryu. Riana genuinely enjoys being an Eva pilot, and has adjusted well to life in a foreign land. She also has found, with some chagrin and worry, that she_ enjoys _battle._

 _Not all is going well for Riana. Her magical powers—the entire reason NERV recruited her- have manifested, but she can barely control them, let alone do anything spectacular. However, Gendo Ikari suspects that Riana may be far more powerful than she herself knows. Moreover, Riana's only living relative—her grandmother, Rissa Arashikaze—is most definitely more than she seems._

 _With SEELE dead and the Dead Sea Scrolls changed, the Eva pilots and NERV drift into unknown territory, where prophecy is no longer certain and the bonds of friendship will be strained beyond belief…_

* * *

Riana Arashikaze slowly awoke. The sand beneath her was warm, and oddly comfortable. She sat up and looked around. She was on a beach…next to a sea of blood.

"Dammit," she sighed. "Not _this_ dream again."

Riana was experiencing more than her share of weird dreams these days. There was the one where she had gone ice skating with Shinji, Rei and Asuka (she had short hair in that one, for some reason). There was the one where she had choked Rei while screaming she was actually a fictional character in someone else's story (Riana put that one down to one too many bowls of green tea ice cream). There was the one where Shinji had seen her stepping out of the shower (that one wasn't _too_ bad). And then there was this one, where she woke up on a beach next to a red sea. The problem with knowing you were in a dream, Riana reflected, was that it didn't guarantee immediately waking up from it. _The stupid movies lied to me,_ she thought.

Still, Riana decided, she might as well play out the dream to its end. She stood up, brushed off the sand from her gray plugsuit, and headed over the hill. _Sure hope this one's better than the last time. Really don't need to see Shinji choking Asuka, and Rei…whatever the hell Rei was._

Just like in the last dream, it seemed to take a long time to get to her destination, wherever it was, over sand dunes that seemed to get progressively higher, deeper, and tougher to climb. She reached one that took her getting on her hands and knees to reach the summit.

When she did, she wished she hadn't. The sea of blood was still there, the waves still washing ashore and breaking softly. The beach didn't have Shinji Ikari or Asuka Langley-Soryu, or even the half-skull of Rei Ayanami.

Instead, it was an unending beach of dead bodies.

"Why can't I have wholesome dreams?" Riana wondered aloud. She looked at the starry sky, bisected by a rainbow of blood. "Other girls get dreams about their boyfriends and weird metaphors about their periods, but oh no, _I_ get dead bodies!" she shouted at the sky. "I swear, if there's a killer clown in here somewhere, I quit! You hear me? I _quit!_ " Yelling at the stars seemed to do nothing, so Riana, muttering curses she learned from her grandmother, half-walked, half-slid down the dune to the beach.

* * *

The beach was carpeted with dead, but there was a clear path through them. At first, Riana ignored them—clearly, her subconscious, her destiny, or God wanted her to go this way, so that way she would go. Her boot touched one body, and she jumped in fear, because she thought it had moved, though that was unlikely, with its throat bitten out. Riana looked closer: the body was male, barely dressed in a breechclout, his face bearded and clotted with blood, the eyes staring and dead. She straightened up, and saw one hand gnarled around a war club.

She moved on. The next group of bodies wore bronze armor, their heads hidden behind helmets that left only the eyes and mouth exposed; their hands clutched long spears. She did not recognize them, but she recognized the next bunch: Roman legionnaires, their armor now more leather than bronze, the shields bigger and square, not round like the ones before, holding shortswords rather than spears. And then knights, in plate armor, the swords longer and heavier. At the foot of another dune, men—and now women, as well—dressed in pirate garb. The fatal wounds were now not just stab wounds or gaping slashes, but bullet holes as well.

She climbed over that low dune. At the bottom of that one lay a tangle of men and horses, uniforms of dark blue, with gaudy filigree and sabers and flintlocks. There were no bladed wounds on these men, only bullets; they were riddled with them. Riana's stomach heaved at the sight of what roundshot and canister could do to flesh and bone.

Riana began to run. The bodies piled deeper on either side of the path now. Uniforms became a lighter blue, and an off-gray. They darkened again, with gold ranks; then there were men and women, half-naked, in war paint. The air thickened as bowl-like helmets appeared and the uniforms became khaki, and the corpses were not just shot or blasted into bloody ruin, but bloated and green. She ran faster as the body piles towered on either side of her, green and khaki and field gray and olive drab. She picked her away around the blasted remains of a tank, the crew inside carbonized into caricatures of human beings. Uniforms were camouflaged now, green and desert colored, mismatched and haphazard.

And then, abruptly, the bodies stopped. Riana emerged from the charnel house into an empty beach. This was somehow worse. There were no bodies. There was just ash, and shadows burned into the beach; where the shadows were, there was no beach, but sickly green glass. Riana stared, turned in place to look at the mountains of dead behind her, and the red sea beside her. All her humor was gone now.

The blood sea was from the bodies, streaming down in wide channels to feed the crimson surf.

Then, abruptly, Riana heard voices. Somewhere—in front of her, once she turned from the bodies—there was someone alive.

* * *

Riana sprinted down the beach, stirring up ash as she went; her heart pounded and her lungs felt like they would burst, but it was worth it to get to something living and away from the unending graveyard. Predictably, there was a dune blocking her way, but she took at the run, and reached the top.

And once more, wished she hadn't.

There were bodies below her again. Not as many, but they were once again soldiers of some kind, dressed in black uniforms and body armor. Not that the latter helped, since they were also dead. Intermixed with the dead soldiers were people she recognized as wearing NERV uniforms. There was a gunshot, and she turned in the direction of the noise.

It was her father. Riana recognized him, even though she had never once seen him: Thomas Arashikaze.

"Hello, Riana," he said.

"D..Dad?" Tears ran down her face. If this was hell, then it would be tolerable with the father she had never known. She ran down the dune and threw her arms around him. She half expected there to be nothing there, a ghost, but Thomas was as solid and real as she was. "Daddy?"

"That's my little girl. Well, not little anymore. You've grown." His rough hands went through her hair. "It's good to meet you." His voice was just like she had imagined it: strong, confident, yet gentle.

"It's good to meet you too, Daddy." Even though she knew her father had not been a particularly tall man, and Riana was tall for her age, she still only came up to his waist, as if she was still a little girl. She drew away from him, and looked Thomas in the face. He was ruggedly handsome, and she recognized the impish, mischievious look that stared out of the photograph on her desk. "What are you doing here, Daddy?"

"Killing enemies. 'Scuse me for a second." He kept his left arm around her as he turned and fired a pistol. Someone on the ground who had been weakly moaning was now silent. Riana looked at the body and her eyes widened. Her father had just killed Ritsuko Akagi.

"Dad, that was—"

"Riana? Is that you?"

Riana turned and her heart leapt at the sight of a woman she had known, but only for the first hour of Riana's life. Clarice Arashikaze grinned at her daughter with the grin that Riana recognized from her own mirror. "Oh, my!" She ran over to Riana and enfolded her in a hug. "Oh, my!" she repeated. "It's good to see you again! It's been so very long."

"Er…yeah, Mama." It wasn't that Riana did not want to hug her mother, it was that she was being smothered by her; evidently, that was where she got her bust from. Riana shifted herself around so that she was hugging her mother in a more conventional fashion, rather than being stifled by her bosom. "You're so beautiful, Mama!"

"Not as beautiful as you, Riana." The hug tightened.

Riana opened her eyes, and to her surprise, she saw Gendo Ikari floating in midair, frozen in a look of utter terror, his legs gone below the knees and smoking. "Mom! What—how—is that—"

"Oh, my." Clarice let go of her daughter and turned. She closed her eyes and inclined her head. Gendo's body seemed to become desiccated, as the flesh turned dark brown and shriveled, and his hair turned gray before it fell out entirely. A decomposed Gendo Ikari hung in the air for only a moment before it fell apart into a skeleton and then dust. "I'm sorry about that, Riana. Mommy had to deal with him." Her eyes opened, and Riana saw something there that she did not like. " _No one_ threatens my daughter."

"That's what Arashikazes do to our enemies," Thomas put in. "How's it going over there, Allie?"

"Mmf! Good!" Riana whirled to see another family member. This one she remembered dimly from when she was a toddler: the odd, almost punk hairstyle, the green eyes shared with her brother, but an expression of sadness and a smile that never quite made it to those eyes. Riana's hands went slowly to her mouth as her Aunt Allegra glanced up at her, and smiled. The smile made it to the eyes this time, but once more, there was something wrong about them.

The eyes were a distant second in horror to the fact that Allegra was covered in blood. In her hands was an arm. At her feet was what was left of Asuka Langley-Soryu, torn apart and eviscerated, her blue eyes glassy and sightless. Riana's aunt waved the arm towards her. "Don't tell me you've never wanted to take a bite out of Asuka." When Riana said nothing, Allegra shrugged and tore the arm down the middle, like a piece of paper. More blood spattered her black uniform.

"Are you a…a…a…" Riana stammered.

"Vampire? Don't be silly. Vampires aren't real." Allegra licked the blood from her fingers. "But I must say that cannibalism is underrated. The blood of enemies is rather tasty."

Riana backed up and felt cold steel behind her. "Oh, there you are," said a new voice.

"Gramma." Riana did not have to see her. It made warped sense: the rest of her family was there, save one.

* * *

Riana slowly turned around. Before her was an Eva, all black, but not whole: the head was a crushed ruin and one leg was completely gone. Rissa Arashikaze stood atop it, leaning on a sword. Riana's grandmother pulled the blade out, dodged a gout of LCL from the Eva's chest, then jumped down. "Wondered when you'd get here."

"I'm in hell," Riana breathed. "I'm in hell."

Rissa shook her head. "This isn't hell, Riana. Not even close. And you're not dead."

"I think I am, though!" Allegra laughed. There was a sucking noise, then a pop. "Ooh, an eyeball!"

Riana did not dare turn around at that; she knew if she did, her sanity would shatter completely. "What is…all of this?"

"This?" Rissa replied. "This beach, here? This is where our enemies are, Riana. They're all dead. All of them. They may not know it yet, but they are _all_ dead." She motioned towards the distant mounds of bodies, though Riana still refused to turn around. "And those? That's my legacy, granddaughter, the age long strife you see. Where I have fought in many guises, many names, but always me." Rissa held out the sword. "And now it's _your_ legacy, Riana. Take this."

"I can't…"

There was a hand on her left shoulder. "Of course you can, Riana," Thomas said. "Become an Arashikaze. Become a part of the family."

"It took me awhile too," Clarice added, from Riana's right shoulder. "But eventually I did it too, Riana. I had to marry into it, but oh my, it was wonderful."

Allegra came into view, glowing slightly green. She wiped gore on her pants and belched. "Sorry. Excuse me." She took the sword from her mother's hands and held it out by the blade, the ornate hilt pointed at Riana. "Try it, you'll like it."

Despite herself, Riana took the sword. It felt alive in her grip. The blade was coated in a sheen of orange LCL, but it reflected the starlight in a bright shine. She felt the power, the magic in it. It flowed down her arm and through her body to her feet. She gasped with the feeling, with enough force that her eyes closed involuntarily with the sheer thrill and her toes curled inside the plugsuit boots.

"See?" Allegra giggled. "Told ya."

When Riana opened her eyes, Rissa was holding someone from behind, with one hand by the throat. Although he was bigger and muscular, he could do nothing but struggle weakly in her grasp. "To be apart of this family, Riana, you must kill our enemies. Do you understand?"

Riana nodded. She felt her lips peel back in a feral grin. She was shaking in anticipation. "Yes!" she shouted. Her head whipped to see her father and mother. "Can I?"

"Sure. That's a good little girl," Thomas smirked.

"You're so beautiful," Clarice said, her eyes sparkling with tears. "Of course you may."

"Go for it, kiddo!" Allegra exulted.

With a wild laugh, Riana thrust forward—the sword had become a naginata blade, and it easily cut through clothes, skin, bone and heart to burst out the back, a foot of glittering, bloody steel. The man—boy, really—that she had killed coughed blood and slumped backwards. He fell, and Riana put out a boot to pull the naginata out. It came free with a sucking noise, not unlike the sound that Asuka's eyeball had made when Allegra had plucked it out and ate it. Riana acknowledged that now, and she looked at her aunt, who winked at her. "Like I said," she said, "tasty."

"Welcome to the family, Riana," Rissa spoke. "How does it feel?"

Riana stared down at the body of Toji Suzuhara. "It feels…" She ran her gloved hand over the naginata blade. "It feels _great."_

* * *

Riana started awake. She did not sit up in a hurry, or wake up screaming. Instead, as she blinked away the cobwebs of sleep, she felt rather refreshed.

"Are you all right?" Rei Ayanami whispered from beside her.

Riana sat up slowly. "Yeah…I think so." It took a moment to realize that this was the reality, and her blood-soaked family, the graveyard, and the impaled body of Toji was the dream. "Yeah," Riana repeated. "I'm all right, I think."

The dawn was streaming in through the windows. "We should get up," Rei said. "It will be time to leave for school soon."

Riana checked the clock. Normally she felt surly and exhausted at this time of morning, but this time she was fine. "I need to sleep with Rei more often," she laughed softly.

"Excuse me?" Rei asked.

"Nothing, Rei." Riana stood and began to fold up her comforter. "Rei, I can't thank you enough for letting me sleep over. That really…" Her voice trailed off.

Rei was standing as well, and noticed Riana staring at her. "What is it?" She plucked at the shirt and drew it over her head. "You have seen me naked on several occasions, Riana."

"N-no, that's…that's not it." Riana shook her head. "It's nothing. Guess I'm not quite awake yet."

"You are not a morning person," Rei stated.

"You got that right." Riana finished folding up the comforter, threw it over her shoulder, and stuffed Inu-Yasha into it. "Anyway, thanks again. Really."

"It was nothing." For just the briefest of moments, Riana thought Rei was going to smile. The other girl didn't, but there was something friendly in her expression, at least.

"Well, see you in school—"

"Riana." Rei's voice stopped Riana halfway to the apartment door. "Your grandmother. You should call her. Talk to her." When Riana said nothing, Rei continued, "You should not become like Shinji-kun and Commander Ikari. It would not be right. It is not right for…" Now it was Rei who could not complete the sentence. "It is not a good thing," she eventually finished.

"No…it's not." Riana smiled. "I'll call her after school, Rei. I promise. You're right. We just got a little hot at each other, I guess. I'll apologize. I know better than that." Riana looked at her slippers. "So does _she,_ but oh well." She opened the door. "Okay…see you in school."

"Of course." Rei waited until the door was closed, then took off her underwear, grabbed a towel from a drawer, and walked into the tiny bathroom. She was about to turn on the water when she saw her reflection. Her red eyes blinked, then she took a closer look, first at her hair, then at her fingernails.

Both were longer. Her blue hair now reached to her shoulders, and her nails, which were usually well-trimmed, were long—not excessively so, but longer than Rei had ever let them get. When she glanced down, her toenails were longer as well.

Rei sat on the toilet and trimmed her nails quickly and efficiently. She almost padded back out to find some scissors, then looked at her reflection again. A ghost of a smile flitted across her lips.

She rather liked her hair, at that.


	2. The Enemy Within

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry about the length of time since the last update. Been busy. This is something of a "filler" chapter, but you need those now and then to set up the more exciting stuff._

 _First Municipal Junior High School_

 _Tokyo-3, Japan_

 _8 November 2016_

Riana walked to school, her mind in turmoil. There was a lot to think about.

First of all, Rei was right—she needed to call her grandmother. Riana still believed she was in the right, that her grandmother was very much in the wrong—but that didn't matter. Better to be the bigger girl, and it was the Christian thing to do.

Second of all, she needed to get back into the swing of things at school. With everything at NERV, her studies had been somewhat neglected. Trying to learn the intricacies of Japanese history when it looked like the world was about to end seemed to be a little pointless, but life went on. There had to be some structure to it.

Third, she wanted to talk to Kazuko Bishamon about continuing their lessons. It was time consuming, but Riana knew she had been wrong about it being useless and confusing. She had to control the power, and here lately it seemed to be more controlling her.

Fourth—and most importantly—she had to make sense of the dream. She thought she had covered herself well with Rei, but while getting dressed, she could not stop herself from shaking. The worst part was that the dream felt _right,_ somehow. She did not feel sleepy; she felt very much awake, as if a part of her that had been asleep for a very long time no longer was. Riana was not sure if that was a good thing or not.

Gendo Ikari and Ritsuko Akagi she understood; her subconscious probably resented them for their constant hazing, even if she herself knew that the harassment and disapproval was to make her a better Eva pilot. Even Asuka made sense: Riana disliked Asuka in her waking moments, so there was no telling what her subconscious thought about Asuka, though imagining the other girl being eaten was more than a little frightening. But why Toji Suzuhara? She liked Toji. Sure, he was a goofball, a big, not terribly bright lunk, but he deserved a lot better than to be murdered by her own hands. Even if he did, the act of killing should not have made her feel so good. Riana knew she was becoming a woman, but if it was her sexuality that was awakening, it should not include violence. Only psychopaths got off on killing people. She wasn't a psychopath.

At least, Riana hoped she wasn't.

School seemed normal enough, anyway. A few people said hello to her or nodded in a friendly fashion. As she exchanged her street shoes for her school pair, her math teacher—not the old man from Class 2-A—complimented her on her improving Japanese. _Maybe this is what I need,_ Riana thought. _Some good, old fashioned, boring normalcy._ She shouldered her bookbag and began walking up the stairs to Class 2-A.

"Stop right there!" Riana recognized the shrill voice of Hikari Horaki, followed by a scream of help, assorted yelps, and then the unmistakable sound of people falling down the stairs. Riana, with reflexes born of years of training with her grandmother and weeks of training with her Eva, nimbly leapt aside from the latest threat…which turned out to be Shinji Ikari and Toji Suzuhara, one each.

Shinji and Toji were twisted around each other in a grotesque hug, with Shinji on top of Toji as they rolled to a stop against the wall of the landing.. This left Toji staring somewhat blearily upwards at Riana, his head at her feet.

 _Try it, you'll like it._

Riana's eyes widened and she went pale. Toji seemed no worse for the wear after going down a flight of stairs, mainly because Shinji had taken the worst of it, but all Riana saw was Toji impaled on a naginata and a pool of blood. The bookbag fell from nerveless fingers.

"Oh no!" Hikari was racing down the stairs. "Are you two okay?" Then she noticed where Toji's head was placed, where Riana was standing, and her look of concern turned to disgust. She delivered a punishing kick to Toji's thigh. "Dammit, Suzuhara! Bad enough you have to look up _my_ dress, but now you have to look up Arashikaze's too?"

The world snapped back into focus, and Riana abruptly realized that there was no possible way Toji could have missed seeing her panties. She yelped and leapt back even faster than she had before, hands reflexively shoving the dress between her thighs. Hikari gave Toji another kick for good measure, then turned to Shinji. "Oh, Shinji-kun! You're bleeding!"

Shinji lifted his right arm; a thin stream of blood ran down from his elbow. He smiled sheepishly. "It's nothing. I must've hit the mop handle on the way down."

"You should go to the infirmary," Hikari insisted. "That needs to be disinfected. Besides, you might've hit your head." She helped Shinji to his feet and glanced at Riana. "Are you all right, Arashikaze-kun? You don't look so good."

"Uh…I'm…I'm okay," Riana stammered. "Just a little early in the morning to be showing off my undies…"

Hikari turned wrathful eyes back to Toji, who groaned and got to his feet. " _You_ continue cleaning, Suzuhara."

"But I'm bruised all over!"

"Good! You deserve it, pervert! Come along, Shinji." With one last baleful look at Toji, Hikari led Shinji down the stairs. Shinji shrugged at Riana, who blushed and turned away.

That left her alone with Toji. "Ya know," he said to her, "Shinji was the one peepin' out the girls. I wasn't doin' nothing." Even with his strange Osakan accent, Riana could tell he was lying through his teeth. Toji was not very good at subterfuge. He reached down and picked up her bookbag, and handed it to her. Riana was not sure what to say. Neither was Toji, which was why he probably should not have kept speaking. "I'm sorry, Arashikaze. Really, I didn't mean to see your pant—" Toji's brain caught up with his mouth and he took a step back. There was only one girl at First Municipal Junior High that was as tall as Toji Suzuhara, and she was standing in front of him. "Ah, shit," he said softly. "Please don't kill me, Arashikaze."

Riana's lips trembled. Her eyes filled with tears. She turned and fled down the stairs, leaving Toji to conclude that he would never, ever understand females.

* * *

 _Tokyo-3 Hilton_

 _Tokyo-3, Japan_

 _8 November 2016_

The phone rang insistently. Rissa Arashikaze moaned from underneath the covers. A hand reached out from beneath them, groped around, and found the phone. The hand then withdrew back under the covers. "Arashikaze," she mumbled.

"Rissa? This is Lee Mortimer."

The voice brought Rissa to more or less full consciousness. She pulled the covers off of her face and sat up in bed. "Yeah."

"What the hell are you doing still in bed? It's what, 10 AM there?"

"Fuck off," she snarled. "I've had a rough two days." She stared at the bottle of whiskey on the nightstand.

"Well, put on your big girl panties, because it's about to get rougher." Lee Mortimer was Rissa's CIA liasion. They had known each other for years, from before Second Impact, and he was one of the few people allowed to talk to her like that. "NERV-02 in Nevada is gone."

"Gone? What the fuck does that mean?" Mortimer, Rissa knew, was not given to hyperbole. "Somebody steal it? It explode? What?"

"Yeah, I guess 'explode' is a good word, if by explode you mean 'wiped off the map.' There's nothing there now but a really big crater, Rissa. Like God came along and scooped out the facility."

Now she was awake for sure. "Shit. How many people?"

"Probably about five thousand. Not even any bodies, Rissa. The place got vaporized. The shockwave shattered windows in Vegas and in Reno, and they're a good couple of hundred miles from NERV-02. Hell, satellites picked up the blast from over the horizon."

Rissa put her brain into gear as she tried to remember what was at NERV-02. It wasn't coming. "What was there, exactly?"

"EVA-04. From what our sources tell us, it was the third production model."

"Sabotage?"

"Could be. Might be an accident, too. That's the official word out of NERV right now. We do know that they had an engine test scheduled this morning…something to do with that weird engine they use in those things. I think it's called a S2 or S3 engine, something like that. The Germans built it at NERV's Berlin facility. The whole thing might've gone up."

"Except the S2 engine is supposed to be advanced fusion. Fusion engines don't explode."

"Your guess is as good as mine, Rissa."

Rissa leaned back against the headboard. NERV had lied about everything else. It stood to reason that they had lied about the engines as well. _I should've tortured Keel before I killed him,_ she thought. _Waterboarded, used the ropes, something. Found out more._ She slammed her fist down on the pillows, which was not very satisfying. _Dammit, Riana, why won't you listen to me?_ That reminded her of something. "What about EVA-03, at the NERV Massachusetts facility?"

"I was getting to that. The explosion in Nevada's all over the news. Congress is pissed. Senator Johnson's already calling for EVA-03 to be sent to NERV HQ in Japan. I think the words he said was 'kick the bastard out.'"

"Can't say as I blame him. NERV Massachusetts is about ten klicks from Springfield. The Senator has family there."

"Yeah. They don't want another Boston on their hands." Mortimer sighed. "What now?"

"I don't know. I'm having a meeting with the JSSDF today. Maybe they'll know more."

"Want me to step up our surveillance in Massachusetts?"

Rissa nodded, though Mortimer could not see her. "Yeah, let's do that. Maybe they'll talk more now. Scared people talk."

"How's Riana doing? Still can't believe you let her become an Eva pilot."

"She's _fine._ " The word came out as a growl.

Mortimer chuckled. "Let me guess. Riana's being a teenager."

"Kind of."

"She's at that age. Rosie went from playing with dolls to a stone cold little bitch overnight. She straightened out eventually. All those hormones. I bet you were a hellion when you were a teenager too. Just got to give it time, Rissa."

"Time is something we're out of, Lee. I'll call you back when I know more." She stabbed the button and hung up before Mortimer could say anything further. Rissa stood and looked out over Tokyo-2. It looked like another beautiful autumn day. She looked at the whiskey again, then grabbed the bottle and tossed it into the trash. It was time to go to work.

* * *

 _Central Dogma, The Geofront_

 _Tokyo-3, Japan_

 _8 November 2016_

Ritsuko Akagi stared up at the dummy plug. It looked no different than the plugs used by the Eva pilots in their machines, except that there was no pilot hatch, and no openings for the explosive bolts that would eject the plug in an emergency. NERV's logo was emblazoned on the side as usual, but just forward of the leaf was a plaque that read _DUMMY PLUG EVANGELION 2015 REI-00._

"It has Rei's persona transplanted within, but the soul itself cannot be digitized." Gendo Ikari walked over to stand beside Ritsuko.

"It's a fake. Nothing more than an imitation," she snapped. There was something in Gendo's voice that irritated Ritsuko. She wondered if, perhaps, it was just one more reminder of what Rei Ayanami truly represented.

"It does not matter," Gendo answered, seemingly unperturbed by her tone of voice. "All we need is for the Eva to think it carries a pilot, then synch with that perception." He gave her a short nod. "Input the data into Unit 01 and Unit 02 immediately."

"There's still that problem we observed in the tests," Ritsuko protested.

"No matter. Just as long as the Evas move."

"Very well."

Gendo turned and walked towards the central part of the chamber. It was a tube that ran towards the ceiling; at the top was a seemingly random grouping of cables, wires and cooling pipes. The whole chamber was lit a bright orange, from the floor—soft enough that it did not hurt the eyes, but still rather unnatural. Then again, Ritsuko mused, nothing about Central Dogma, and especially here, was natural. "What about EVA-03?" she asked.

"The UN is bringing it to the Matsushiro base. We'll prep and run the startup experiment there at the end of the week, when it gets here." Gendo stopped in front of the tube.

"All right," Ritsuko said. "What about the pilot? I assume we'll be using Riana Arashikaze."

"That was the plan, yes," Gendo confirmed.

"Even with her…powers?" Gendo turned and faced Ritsuko with half a sardonic smile. Ritsuko wondered what he would do if she shoved his face into the plexiglass tube. "Yes, Commander, I acknowledge their existence," Ritsuko said through clenched teeth, "even if I can't explain them. But we do not know how they will react when in an actual Eva, rather than her dead-metal EVA-03A. I'd like to have some safeguards in case there's a…a problem."

"Mm." Gendo returned his attention to the tube. "That is a good idea, Doctor. It seems that Riana and her grandmother may have had a confrontation last night. I do not know the details as of yet, but it would be good to have a backup in case Riana should prove troublesome, in any way. However, I do still consider Riana to be our primary pilot for EVA-03."

She chose not to remark on that. "As I said, the dummy plug still presents certain dangers. We'll draw from the current candidates." Ritsuko paused. "There is one who could do it, if enhanced."

"Ah. The Fifth, I suppose."

"Well, he was the Fourth, before Riana arrived."

"Very well. I'll leave it to you, Doctor." Gendo smiled at the tube's occupant as her eyes came open. "Good afternoon, Rei. You can come out now. Let's grab a bite to eat."

Rei smiled back. "Okay." Her voice was somewhat muffled by the LCL she floated in. She made no move to cover her nudity; Gendo had seen it all before, many times, and she was not ashamed in the least. The LCL drained away through the bottom of the tube, and with a hiss of depressurization, it opened. Rei stepped out of the tube and accepted the towel Gendo held for her, and began to dry herself off.

It was then that Gendo and Ritsuko finally noticed. Neither were there when Rei had entered the chamber that morning, and the LCL somewhat distorted Rei's features; it had been hard to tell, and they were so used to the sight of Rei's body that their minds had not processed it. "Rei…your hair is longer," Gendo said with some alarm.

Rei toweled off her hair, lifting it from her shoulders. "Yes."

"It was short yesterday." It was not often that Gendo Ikari stated the obvious. Rei was not sure how to respond, so she merely answered "Yes" once more.

"Why?" Ritsuko asked.

"I don't know." Rei finished drying her hair, bent down, and picked up another towel to begin working on her body. "I woke up and it was like that." She dried off her small breasts. "It could have something to do with Riana Arashikaze, perhaps. She stayed with me last night."

"She did _what?"_ Gendo exclaimed.

"She was not sleeping well, so she asked to sleep in my bed. It seemed to help her sleep better, and she felt much better this morning…though I do believe that she experienced a nightmare. Was I wrong to let her stay?" Rei seemed confused by Gendo's expression of shock.

It took a moment for Gendo to find his voice, something else that rarely happened. "No," he said at length. "No, Rei, that is all right. I'll advise Arashikaze-san not to make a habit of it, however."

"Given that I went to bed last night with my customary short hair," Rei continued, drying her feet, "and woke up with this, it would be logical to suggest that my hair growth could be due to Arashikaze-kun's powers." She tossed the towel on top of the other. "May I go and get dressed?"

"Of…of course," Gendo replied. "Certainly. We'll cut your hair after we eat."

Rei looked up at him quizzically. "If you order me to, sir, I will. But I would rather not. I…actually like it this way." She turned and began walking towards the small dressing room outside the main one.

Gendo watched her leave. "Doctor?"

Ritsuko had already pulled her datapad from the pocket of her lab coat. She showed him the data. "Confirmed," she told him. "Rei has aged. Not much, probably no more than a few weeks…but she has definitely aged. Her cell growth has changed." At the look on Gendo's face, Ritsuko was not sure if she wanted to laugh at him or reassure him. She chose the latter. "It's not destabilizing to her genetic makeup. Her body shows no ill effects…just hair growth. Given the appearance of her toenails, I would guess they grew as well, and Rei trimmed them."

Gendo handed back the datapad. "Riana aged her, Doctor. In her sleep." He shook his head. "Literally, in her sleep."

Ritsuko could not hold back her smile. _You've created a monster, Gendo Ikari,_ she thought, _and you just realized that you have no control over her._


	3. Love's Been a Little Bit Hard On Me

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: Even though this chapter is mostly a lot of talking, it took a lot to write. I had to rewrite the last part several times before I was satisfied. Since I took so long to get this written, enjoy an extra long chapter!_

 __

 _First Municipal Junior High School_

 _Tokyo-3, Japan_

 _8 November 2016_

"I'm sorry, Miss Arashikaze," the school secretary said. "Miss Bishamon is out today. Is there something I can help you with?"

Riana shook her head. "No…that's all right, Miss Moroboshi. I'll check back with her later. It's not an emergency or anything." _Not an emergency, Miss Moroboshi,_ she thought, _I'm just losing my mind, that's all._ "Is Miss Bishamon all right?"

"Oh yes." The matronly secretary smiled. "Just a little bit of the flu. It's going around. Are you sure you're all right? You look like you've been crying."

"I'm okay, Miss Moroboshi. I'll just head back to class."

"All right, then. Go to the nurse if you're not feeling better. It _might_ be that time of the month, you know." Moroboshi winked at her.

Riana laughed a little as she left the office. _I wish it was as simple as my period screwing up my hormones. Well, you wanted to be special, Riana Arashikaze, and now you are. Congratulations, dipshit._

* * *

She made her way to Class 2-A. Luckily she was early, and the class had not yet started. It was in its usual pre-class state of anarchy. Some of the other students were chatting, and Riana spotted Shinji and Toji in the back. It did not take magic to know that Toji was copying Shinji's homework—again. Sooner or later, he was going to get caught. Riana saw that Asuka was there as well, studiously ignoring everyone, her nose in a manga. Riana shuddered to remember what her aunt had been doing to the other girl. _Gotta quit thinking about that,_ she admonished herself.

Toji looked up at her. "Ay, Arashikaze. About the stairs…"

Riana waved it away. "Don't sweat it, Suzuhara." She wondered if the color of her panties would be around the school by the end of the day. Toji was not exactly a man of tact.

"Say, Toji," Shinji said in a low voice, "for the sake of, er, strategy…why not copy someone else's homework for once?"

"Like whose? Arashikaze's?"

"That's a bad idea," Riana said over her shoulder. Toji was copying Shinji's math homework, and if there was anything Riana was worse at than kanji, it was math.

"I was actually thinking of the class rep." Riana glanced behind her at that. Shinji was turning a bit red, and couldn't meet Toji's eyes.

"What? _Her?_ The stingy square of Class 2-A? She'd never stoop to charity!" If Toji had meant that to come out in the same low tone of voice Shinji was using, he had failed miserably.

Hikari was out of her desk faster than an Eva being launched. " _Who's_ a stingy square, Suzuhara?"

Toji ducked as if Hikari had pulled out a gun. "I wasn't talkin' about you!"

"You pointed right at me!" Hikari shrilled. Toji stuck his tongue out at her, to which Hikari began to well and truly rail at him. Riana sighed and moved her desk a little to one side, to give them fighting room. Asuka, with almost the exact same sigh, did the same.

What might have degenerated into an all-out brawl was interrupted by the arrival of the teacher. Riana reflected for the fiftieth time that she had forgotten the old man's name. "Suzuhara? Toji Suzuhara?"

Toji hesitantly raised his hand. "Yeah, I'm here."

"You're wanted down in the principal's office," the teacher told him. The old man looked a bit confused, but then he usually did.

"What did you do _now?"_ Hikari demanded. "You pushed Shinji down the stairs, you looked up my—" She slapped a hand over her own mouth.

"I didn't do nothin'!" Toji thought for a moment. "Nothin' I can remember, anyhow." He shrugged. "My soul is innocent, but I'll go." He stuffed his homework in his bookbag and followed the teacher out of the classroom.

There was silence in the class for a moment or two, then Hikari rounded on Riana. "Did you report him to the principal?" She sounded angry.

"No," Riana replied. "Miss Bishamon isn't even here today. She's sick with the flu." Riana noticed just then that Rei was not in class either.

"That's weird." Hikari slowly walked back to her desk. "I wonder what he did?"

Shinji took his seat. "I hope his sister hasn't gotten worse." Riana almost asked what Toji's sister had to do with it, but then remembered: Sakura Suzuhara was badly injured in the battle between EVA-01 and an Angel, before Riana came to Japan. She was still in the hospital. Shinji, Riana heard, held himself responsible.

"The real question is," Asuka said from behind her manga, "what did Toji look up?" Hikari turned bright red. Asuka smiled. "Let me guess. Your skirt?" If possible, Hikari's face turned even more crimson.

"And mine," Riana said sourly. "Though with me it was likely an accident."

Asuka smiled icily at Riana. "Oh, I bet you liked that. Most action you've ever gotten, Sister."

Riana smiled back, with about the same warmth. "At least Toji's in my age group." That wiped the smile off Asuka. Any retort was cut off by the return of the teacher, but as Hikari led the class in standing, Riana noticed the hurt look on Hikari's face.

* * *

The morning class period passed slowly and monotonously, as it always did. Few students were paying attention to the teacher, who was droning on about medieval Japanese history. Riana occasionally took a note, but it was something she already knew fairly well from her grandmother's stories. Instead, she used the time to work on her kanji.

About an hour before lunch, there was a soft chime on her laptop: incoming e-mail from outside the school. She was not supposed to check her mail during class, but that didn't stop any of the other students. Quickly, Riana opened the message. It was from NERV.

MEETING WITH DR. AKAGI AFTER CLASS 4 PM NERV INFIRMARY

 _Uh oh,_ Riana thought. _I bet it's something to do with my meltdown with Gramma. Still, that had nothing to do with NERV._ Another snippet of the dream: Ritsuko Akagi being executed by Riana's father. _Commander Ikari, Dr. Akagi, Asuka, and Toji. All of them killed in my dream. The Commander I get. Asuka I_ definitely _get. But why Dr. Akagi? She hasn't exactly been nice to me, but if it hadn't been for her training program, I'd either be back home or be dead. And Toji still doesn't make sense…_

She was still trying to puzzle it out when the bell rang for the lunch break. Riana shut down her laptop and stuck it in her desk, then pulled her small bento lunch out of her bookbag; her cooking still left a bit to be desired, so she had made a stop at the convienence store on the way to school that morning. Asuka brushed past her and dropped a hand on Hikari's shoulder. "Hikari." Asuka emphasized each syllable. "That won't do, you know."

"What? What won't do?" Hikari was confused.

"There'll be no progress the way you're going now." Asuka turned to look behind her. "Shinji! Come with us. We need a guy's input, and I guess you'll have to do." Shinji cringed, but grabbed his bento and followed Asuka and Hikari out the door.

Curious, Riana walked after them. "Mind if I tag along?"

Asuka gave Riana a dirty look; the crack about Asuka liking older men was obviously not forgotten. Hikari smiled pleasantly. "Sure, come on."

* * *

They went to the roof. It was a rather beautiful day; the air was pleasant, and just enough of a breeze to make things comfortable. Riana sat on the bench and opened her bento while Hikari leaned against the roof railing. Asuka turned on her while Shinji did his best to be invisible. Riana stole a glance at him and patted the bench next to her, but Shinji gave a minute shake of the head. _Doesn't want Asuka to make fun of him,_ Riana mused. She smiled and nodded. _I understand. No reason to prod the beast._

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Asuka demanded.

Hikari was coy. "Why, whatever do you mean, Soryu-san?"

"Don't play dumb, Hikari! You _like_ him, don't you?"

"Like who?" Riana asked.

"Oh God." Asuka whirled to spear Riana with her eyes. "Sister Riana, I do realize that they don't teach this sort of thing at the Order of St. Mary the Meek—"

"It was actually the Order of St. Joan of Arc," Riana interrupted.

"Shut up!" Asuka ordered. "Hikari likes that dope Toji!"

"Oh." Riana shrugged. "Everyone knows that." Actually, she had no idea Hikari liked Toji, but the hurt look made sense now, and Riana could not resist the temptation to play things insufferably cool.

Asuka's expression showed she didn't believe Riana for a second, but she returned her attention to Hikari. The hurt look was back. "It's all right," Hikari said quietly. Her earlier coyness was gone now. "It's all right the way it is."

"It's not all right," Asuka told her. "Think of the days we live in, Hikari."

"What do you mean?"

"The next Angel attack could be our last." Riana's fork stopped halfway to her mouth. Asuka was not shouting, not bragging. She was quite serious. "We're all having fun, sure, but there's no telling what could happen tomorrow. What if you get hurt, like Toji's sister, or even killed?" Asuka shook her head. "No, Hikari. We don't have the time to leave things the way they are. We may not _have_ tomorrow. You need to let Toji know how you feel."

"Today?" Hikari's voice broke on the last letter.

"Well…okay, not today, exactly," Asuka backtracked. "But as soon as you can." She seemed at a loss for words for a moment, so Asuka rounded on Shinji. "You!"

Shinji nearly leapt off the roof. "What?"

"Think of something, _baka!_ You're Toji's friend. How can Hikari and Toji get all lovey-dovey?"

Riana wolfed down half of her rice. "What about just telling him?"

"You be quiet," Asuka said. "Hikari can't just _tell_ him. That's not the way this works."

"It isn't?"

Shinji evidently took inspiration from Riana's lunch. "How about you make him a special lunch, Horiaki-san?" he said. "He's sick of the school's sandwiches. I bet he'd be dancing through the halls if you brought him some good, old-fashioned bento."

Asuka stared at Shinji, as if thinking whether or not to push him off the roof or merely snap his neck. Suddenly, her face lit up in a grin. "We'll use it! Good idea, Shinji—for once. It's corny and it's crude, but it just might work on Baka Toji."

Riana took a sip of her water. "Horiaki-kun, you should personalize it somehow. Make sure that he knows you made it especially for him." At her questioning look, Riana added, "That way he doesn't think you just took pity on him and gave him your bento."

Hikari nodded. Asuka cocked her head to one side, then nodded as well. "Holy crap, Sister Riana. You and Baka Shinji, with good ideas at the same time. It may just be Third Impact."

"Oh, happy day," Riana said flatly.

Asuka clapped her hands on Hikari's shoulders, making her jump. "Well! If this doesn't get you that big lunk, Hikari, I don't know what will."

* * *

Ritsuko Akagi turned at the sound of the door opening to the infirmary. "Good afternoon, Riana."

"Good afternoon, Doctor." Riana walked in, steeled herself, and began to undo the bow at the neck of her school uniform.

Ritsuko held up her hands. "No physical today, Riana. I just want to talk."

"Oh, good." Riana retied the bow. All the pilots were required to undergo physicals on a monthly basis. No one claimed to enjoy them. She took a seat. "What's up, Doc?" Riana grinned, but it faded like a snowball in the Sahara when Ritsuko did not so much as twitch.

"Are you aware that EVA-03 has been delivered to Japan? The _actual_ 03?"

"No!" Riana's eyes lit up. "Oh, wow, does that mean—"

"Hold on a second." Ritsuko took a breath and continued. "Listen, Riana. I'm still at a loss to explain these…powers of yours. But there is a real possibility that they could cause issues with EVA-03. Your current EVA-03A is different, of course. But there is a different type of engine and pilot interface with the other Evas. Therefore, we need to run some tests first—with a different pilot."

"Oh." Riana seemed to deflate. "But…I'll eventually get to pilot it, right?"

"Possibly." Ritsuko was not about to make a promise that she could not keep. Given their level of training and maturity, Riana was actually a better prospect to pilot EVA-03 than this Toji Suzuhara. "We do have some concerns. The biggest one is your inability to control your power."

"I can control them!" Riana insisted, but even to her it sounded hollow.

"From what we can tell, you _did_ control them somewhat during the two battles you have been in," Ritsuko admitted, "but here lately, there have been incidents where your powers have not been controlled. There's a reason why I no longer have a clock in my office, as you recall."

"Right, sorry…I did sort of blow that up—"

"And now there's the incident with Rei."

Riana knew there was no point feigning ignorance. "Her hair grew overnight."

"Yes. Care to explain?"

Riana looked away. "My grandmother and I…we had a fight. A bad one. She doesn't really want me to be here, you know. She's afraid I'm going to get killed. I basically, um, threw her out of my apartment. I couldn't sleep after that, so Rei let me sleep with her." Riana turned red as she realized how that sounded. "I mean, sleep in the same _bed_ with her. Nothing, um, nothing happened."

Ritsuko fought back a smile. Riana was so flustered that it was comical. "And Rei's hair?"

Riana hesitated. She could not tell Ritsuko about the dream. "I don't know. I had some nightmares, and when Rei woke me up to go to school, her hair was down to her shoulders."

"We did some tests. You somehow aged Rei by about a few weeks."

Riana buried her face in her hands. "Oh, no. I bet the Commander is really upset."

"He wasn't happy, no. What's more concerning is that you did this unconsciously." Before Riana could speak, Ritsuko went on. "You can't control your powers, Riana. Even to someone like me, that much is obvious."

"I understand. About the Eva, I mean." Riana sighed. "It would be too risky right now."

Ritsuko's eyebrows rose. She had expected an argument, one that would probably end with Riana being ordered to comply at the request of Commander Ikari. Direct orders was the one surefire way to get Riana Arashikaze to do something. Riana scooted her chair closer to Ritsuko, and to the doctor's surprise, reached out and took the older woman's hands in her own. "Dr. Akagi, I need your help."

"With what?"

"My powers."

Ritsuko almost laughed. "I don't think I'm the right person for that. Riana, I don't have the first clue of what to make of them. They fly in the face of every scientific theory and practice I've ever heard of. You somehow can change time itself. Einstein would have a coronary."

"Which is why I think you can help me!" Riana insisted. "You're not going to give me some sort of mumbo-jumbo Yoda stuff! You'll give me straight answers. As you see it. Maybe you can help me with…I don't know, logic or something!"

Ritsuko, despite herself, was curious all over again. Just as Riana's first display of power had shattered her office clock, which was enough to convince her to train Riana as an Eva pilot, the prospect of learning exactly what made the girl tick was intriguing. _What if she is the next step in evolution?_ Ritsuko asked herself. _What if there are others out there like her? What if the old legends of magic were true, and Second Impact reawakened powers long dormant, and_ that _is the next step_? Her mind, trained in the ways of science, automatically rejected such a preposterous notion. Yet there was that little voice that demanded answers. Ritsuko always listened to that little voice. It had led her to the Genome Project and the that followed. It had also led her into NERV, and Gendo Ikari. She was sure that a similar little voice had killed her mother.

Still, there was no point in stopping now. She had to know. Curse or blessing, Ritsuko Akagi always had to know.

"You are remarkably hard to turn down, you know?" Ritsuko told her.

Riana laughed. "It's my blue eyes."

"It's something." Ritsuko rolled her own eyes. "All right, Riana. I will help you. Just to see how far down the rabbit hole goes." She extricated her hands from Riana's. "But not today. It's a bit late for that. I'll be overseeing the tests for EVA-03 tomorrow, so we can begin in a few days."

Riana pushed the chair back into its original position, stood, and bowed deeply to Ritsuko. "Dr. Akagi, I can't thank you enough."

"After what I put you through the last time, you should probably wait. There will likely be more of the same."

"Thanks anyway." Riana paused. "Um…I'm out of order for asking, but who _is_ the pilot of EVA-03?"

"I suppose there's no harm in telling you," Ritsuko said, "since you'll find out anyway. One of your classmates: Toji Suzuhara."

" _Him?!"_ Riana exclaimed.

"Why does everyone keep saying that?"

"He's kind of a…well, he's kind of a big dork." Riana giggled a little. "I mean, he's a nice guy, but not really a mental giant. His grades aren't all that great."

"Neither are yours, and here we are."

Riana winced. Her scores _could_ stand some improvement. The only subjects she really scored high in were history and English. And athletics, but being a good runner and swimmer wasn't going to help her graduate. "I guess I'll trust your judgement, Doctor."

"I'm glad he meets with your approval. I'll be sure to convey that to Commander Ikari," Ritsuko said dryly.

Riana knew that, when in a hole, the trick was to stop digging. "Right. Er…I guess I'll head on home now. Thanks again, Doctor."

Before she went out the door, Ritsuko called out after her, "Keep Suzuhara's pilot status quiet for now. I imagine the others will find out soon, but that's not for public consumption. I don't think I need to tell you what the penalty will be if you run your mouth."

Riana winced again. "Yes, ma'am."

* * *

Riana headed for Ryoji Kaji's office—assuming she could remember where it was. School would come early enough tomorrow, and she didn't like waiting for public transportation. Kaji could usually be relied on to con a ride out of. When she passed a small lounge on the way, she heard crying. That was strange—it was late in the day; the day shift was headed home and the night shift was already on duty, so no one should be using the lounge. In fact, the only people Riana had ever seen use the lounge was Kaji and Misato, since it was near the former's office.

Riana, out of curiosity, glanced into the lounge to see who it was. To her surprise, it was Asuka Langley-Soryu.

One part of her wanted to just leave at that point: Asuka in pain was not exactly an unwelcome development. The two were operating under something of a ceasefire at the moment, but Asuka's continual snide comments weren't helping keep the peace. If the German girl was hurting emotionally—good, she deserved it.

Another, however, remembered the dream. As bad as Asuka got, Riana did not truly regard her as an enemy, and certainly her demise had been the most disturbing of all of them, with the possible exception of Toji. Whatever Asuka was guilty of, she didn't deserve to be eaten alive, and Riana could not help but wonder if her deceased aunt was a metaphor for something. _Maybe the dream is trying to tell me something,_ Riana considered. _What I will become if I don't get myself under control._ Her aunt was not a cannibal that she knew of, but even Miss Bishamon thought she had been a little spooky.

"Hey," Riana said hesitantly. "Are you okay?"

Asuka looked up from the table. Her pained expression turned to rage. "Get the hell out of here, Sister Riana!"

"I just—"

"I don't care what you want! I don't want to see you! I don't want to see _anyone!"_

Riana's temper almost boiled over, and with effort, she reined it in. If she really was losing control of her powers, she might turn Asuka into dust or something. "Look, dammit. I'm trying to be nice here, Asuka. Maybe I can help. Girl problems?"

"What part of go away don't you get?" Asuka shouted.

"You know what?" Riana replied angrily. "Fuck you. I tried." To add insult to injury, she added, "You know where Mr. Kaji is? I'm going to ask him for a ride."

Asuka leapt out of the chair so fast that Riana reflexively went into a defensive stance. Asuka stalked around the table, though she stayed out of arm's reach. "You stay away from Kaji," Asuka hissed. Then she smiled humorlessly. "On second thought, maybe he _would_ give you a ride. On his baloney pony. He _likes_ girls with big tits and no brains."

Riana might have been naïve and occasionally slow on the uptake, but it did not take a sleuth to put together Asuka's tear-streaked face, the fact that her school uniform top was missing its bow, and the first three buttons were undone, exposing more skin than a 14-year old probably should be. "Something happen between you and Kaji?"

"Oh, go to hell, Sister Riana. What the fuck would you know about it?" Asuka snapped.

"Try me."

"Please. You're just a virgin."

Riana's mouth quirked upwards. "You sure?"

Asuka stopped for a moment and her eyes widened slightly. Then they narrowed. "Nice try."

"Well, you are too." Riana folded her arms across her breasts. "Despite what half the male student body wants to think." Asuka was clearly not going to admit Riana was right. Instead, she turned on one foot and sat back down at the table.

"C'mon, Asuka," Riana said. "Who the hell else are you going to talk to? Rei doesn't give a damn, Shinji doesn't want to hear it, there's no way you'd talk to Aida or Suzuhara about it, and Hikari's too much in lust over Suzuhara. And if it's Mr. Kaji, Major Katsuragi will probably tell you to shove it."

"That old bitch," Asuka grumbled, which confirmed Riana's suspicions. Her face showed the war going on behind her eyes: the reluctance to tell someone she didn't like, and the need to tell someone about it. "Why should I tell you? Why are you interested?"

 _Good question,_ Riana asked herself. She knew herself enough that her desire to talk to Asuka was not entirely altruistic. "You need to talk to someone, and I'm the only one who's not going to gossip about it. As for why, either I'm just a good-hearted Christian girl, or I enjoy watching you suffer. Your choice."

Asuka actually chuckled for a moment, then motioned to a chair. Instead, Riana fished out her tiny coin purse and bought them both a small can of soda. "You're right. Mr. Kaji and I had a fight." Before Riana could ask anything further, Asuka continued, the words piling up after each other. "I went into his office, and told him I loved him."

Riana nearly spit her soda over the table. She had not been expecting that. "Why?" she choked out.

"Because I do, all right? You can't explain love. Like I said, I wouldn't expect you to know!"

Riana wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "And he turned you down." It was not a question.

"Yeah. He said I was a kid." Asuka toyed with the soda and smiled slowly. "So I took my shirt off and _showed_ him I'm not a kid."

If Riana had taken another drink, it would have ended up all over the other girl. "Holy shit," she breathed. "You tried to _seduce_ Kaji?" Riana left off the normal _san_ in amazement. "Are you crazy? I don't know what the age of consent is around here—"

"It's eighteen," Asuka put in. "By prefecture law. National age of consent is thirteen."

"—and I'm not going to ask how you know that," Riana finished.

"But it doesn't matter, Riana. Remember what I told Hikari today? We could die tomorrow. All of us. Me, you, Shinji, Wondergirl—we'd probably die first, if the Angels beat us. Then everyone else in Third Impact. That's what will happen if the Angels win, you know that, don't you? We may not have time to grow up. And I don't want to die without knowing…without knowing what it's like."

Riana stared at her soda can. She could sympathize with Asuka there. She was young, barely a teenager, but already felt those uncertain stirrings, like her brain wanted something but couldn't figure out exactly what or why. Logically, she knew it was just part of hitting puberty and becoming a woman: even with her convent upbringing, Riana knew what sex was, even if she wasn't entirely certain of the details. She did know that love should be involved. Asuka clearly did love Kaji, in her own, strange way "I guess I see your point."

Asuka raised an eyebrow. "Really? I'm surprised you're not going to give me some nun lecture about fornication."

Riana looked up and smiled. "Before I remove the splinter from your eye, I should remove the beam from mine. I've thought about it too." At the slow darkening of Asuka's face, she hastily added, "But not about Kaji. He's just too old for me."

"Age is just a stupid number." Asuka rested her chin on her hand, a sardonic smile on her face. "And who have you been having lustful thoughts over, Sister Riana?"

 _Shinji,_ the name leapt unbidden in Riana's mind. She took a drink to hide it, in case Asuka figured it out. "Nobody in particular."

"Uh huh. If you're not after Kaji, then who? Suzuhara isn't your type. Aida?" The smile grew. "Shinji?"

 _The hell with it,_ Riana thought. "Maybe."

Asuka made a face like she was going to vomit. "Ugh. He's such a little boy. No spine. No balls. He wouldn't be any fun. He wouldn't last thirty seconds. At least Kaji is experienced."

"Sure…with Misato." Riana leaned back in the chair, with a slight enjoyment at watching Asuka stare daggers at her. "Asuka, like I said, I see your point. But just because we might die tomorrow isn't a reason to go leaping onto the next dick that wanders across your path." Riana made a walking motion with her fingers. "There's got to be more than that. Affection, love…I don't know, _something."_ At Asuka's sour expression, Riana shrugged. "You might love Kaji, but he doesn't love you, Asuka."

"Yeah," Asuka sighed. "He _explained_ it to me. He wants that fucking old drunk bitch." Asuka drained most of her soda in one gulp, then tossed the rest of it in a garbage can. "Huh. I actually do feel a little better. I guess you're good for something, Riana."

"Well, that's about the nicest thing you've ever said to me," Riana remarked sarcastically.

"Don't let go to your head. Oh, by the way, do you know that moron Toji is the Fifth Child?"

Riana figured there was no point in denying it. She didn't know how Asuka knew; maybe Kaji had told her. "Yeah, Dr. Akagi told me. She also told me she'd have our guts for plugsuits if we told anyone else, except maybe Rei and Shinji."

Asuka laughed. "Who would believe us? Toji Suzuhara, an Eva pilot? The world really is ending." Asuka buttoned her uniform shirt and reknotted the bow. "I'm out of here. I'm going to go home, take a nice, long, hot shower, and think of Mr. Kaji the whoooole time." Her tone of voice left little to the imagination of what she meant, and Riana blushed deeply—which was Asuka's intention. "He's probably still in his office, if you want him to give you a ride home—since I doubt you want to wait with me for the train." She winked. "Good luck with seducing Shinji, Sister Riana, you naughty, naughty nun. Just flash him those sweater puppies and he'll be falling at your feet." She headed down the hall before Riana could shoot back a retort.

Riana glowered after her, and wondered why she hadn't just left Asuka to cry her eyes out. The other girl had neatly turned it around and made it about Riana and her feelings, not Asuka's for Kaji. There was good blackmail material there, to be sure, but Riana knew she would not stoop that low. Not even for Asuka. _No good deed goes unpunished,_ she thought sourly. _I try to be nice and Asuka just gives me shit for it._ _So much for being a friend. Unless…that's Asuka's idea of_ being _a friend?_ Riana shook her head; not even the saintly side of her brain could swallow that.

She crumpled the can and threw it into the recycling bin, then got Asuka's out of the garbage and tossed it in as well. "I'd get a lot further with _my_ boobs than you did," Riana growled, then headed for Kaji's office.


	4. The Eve of the War

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: Short chapter this time to set up the big fight next time. Been struggling with writer's block lately, but this should jar things loose some._

 _The Geofront_

 _Tokyo-3, Japan_

 _9 November 2016_

"Riana? You're not supposed to be here today, are you?" Maya Ibuki looked confused.

"Yeah, I know." Riana leaned close to the other girl. "Maya, do you think I could sneak some simtime today? We don't have to do the whole thing with LCL and all that. Just maybe some weapons training or something. I need to get better at shooting."

Maya hesitated, then looked at the datapad cradled in her arms. She was rarely without it. "Well…you do know Major Katsuragi and Dr. Akagi are gone to Matsushiro today." Riana nodded. "Commander Ikari is here, but…" Maya shrugged and smiled. "I don't think he'd object. Sure. We can set you up in the simulator."

"Cool! Thanks, Maya." Technically, Riana was supposed to be referring to Maya by her rank, but the bridge crew tended to be laid-back about that when the Commander wasn't watching.

As Riana followed her to the bridge, Maya asked, "Aren't you supposed to be in school today?"

"I got the principal's permission to come here," Riana lied smoothly. She was getting better at it. The truth was, Kazuko Bishamon was still gone from First Municipal Junior High. Riana was, quite simply, playing hooky. Undoubtedly the other students in Class 2-A would notice, but she doubted they would say anything; if they did, she would get out of it somehow.

The truth was, Riana Arashikaze very much needed to shoot something.

The day started badly. There had been thankfully no dreams, but that might have been because Riana had barely gotten any sleep. Only after sheer exhaustion had set in did she finally sleep, and the alarm had gone off much too early. Her decision to skip school was initially just to get some sleep. But then her conscience set in, and Riana's morning rest was fitful at best. Finally, unable to put it off any longer, she called her grandmother.

There was no answer.

Riana had called twice, but each time it had gone to voicemail…which was full. That did not surprise Riana; Rissa Arashikaze was a notorious technophobe and never emptied her inbox, because she did not know how. Her grandmother might be able to command a full regiment of combined arms troops, but Rissa struggled with sending e-mail. Still, Riana's number would have registered, but there was still no answer, though she had waited until noon. And as she waited, her anger mounted—at Rissa, at NERV, at Gendo Ikari, and most of all herself. There was nothing worse, Riana fumed silently, than knowing you were acting like an idiot.

Given how angry she was becoming and how uncontrollable her powers seemed to be getting, Riana decided that it would be best not to go to school. One snide remark from Asuka, and Riana would probably age Asuka to a withered old crone, accidentally kill the homeroom teacher, destroy the school, or something else catastrophic. No, she told herself, best to come to NERV and give her anger somewhere to vent safely. Blowing up simulated targets in the simulator seemed the best option, and she really _did_ need to work on her accuracy.

All these thoughts chased themselves around in Riana's head as they went to the bridge. Involuntarily, Riana glanced up and to the left, to the perch above NERV's command center. It was empty, which meant Gendo was likely in his office. Just as well. "Let me enter in this data, Riana, and we'll get you set up," Maya was saying, as she took her customary seat.

"Afternoon, Riana," Makato Hyuga greeted her. Shigeru Aoba threw her a wave.

"Hey, guys." Riana glanced up at the "Big Board," what the bridge crew nicknamed the large projection in front of the bridge. It showed graphs and readouts that she could make no heads or tails of, but she did see that EVA-03 was tagged to most of them. That reminded her: Toji Suzuhara would be testing the Eva today. "Is that the stuff from Matsuhiro?"

"Matsushiro," Aoba corrected her. "Yeah, they're just starting the test sequence now." He turned in his seat. "You want to see it? We've got a live feed. You're going to be piloting it, after all."

"Hope so," Riana whispered to herself. To the bridge crew, she said, "Yeah, let's see it!" with a little more enthusiasm than she felt. She had never actually _seen_ EVA-03, and felt a bit wistful. EVA-03A was not as streamlined nor as advanced as the production types, but Riana had grown fond of her training wheels.

Aoba punched in the commands, and the graphs on the screen moved to one side; the other took a moment to come into focus as the connection was made to Matsushiro. When it did, it took everything Riana had not to scream.

It was the Eva from her dream, the one her grandmother had killed with a sword. It was the one that Riana herself had happily murdered Toji Suzuhara next to. And, like a thunderclap, Ritsuko Akagi's words came back to her: _Somehow, you can control time itself._

And now she knew what the dream meant.

"Oh my God," she breathed.

Aoba took that as an expression of amazement. "It is something, huh? Looks a bit like Asuka's Eva, but it's more advanced. That black color is pretty boss, and…" He trailed off as Riana turned and fled from the bridge. "What's with her? She scared of her own Eva?"

* * *

Riana dashed down the corridor, thankful that she was in her school uniform rather than in her plugsuit, which was not built for traction. She still skidded around a corner, nearly ran down two technicians, and flung open the emergency door rather than wait for the elevator. She prayed fervently that she could remember the way to Gendo Ikari's office as she scampered up the stairs.

Her prayer was answered. She slid to a stop in front of his office door and tried to open it. It was locked, so she hammered on the door with both fists. "Commander Ikari! Commander Ikari! For God's sake, open the door!"

The door, somewhat surprisingly, clicked and slid open. It was dark as usual, the red symbols giving their usual hellish light. Ikari's office always made her distinctly uncomfortable, but Riana ran in and barely stopped before she would have collided with the Commander's desk. She pulled up, struggling and heaving for breath.

Gendo Ikari was as surprised as she ever saw him, which was not very. He put down the papers he had been reading. "Can I help you, Pilot Arashikaze?"

"The…test…" Riana puffed out. "The test…at Matsuhiro…"

"Matsushiro."

She sucked in a gulp of air. "You've got to stop it. You've got to stop it right now."

Gendo's eyebrows rose a fraction. "Oh? And why is that?"

"Something…" Riana paused. "Something terrible is going to happen."

"Such as?"

"I don't know," she replied. The eyebrows rose another fraction. Riana got the impression that Gendo was measuring her for a straitjacket. "Please, Commander Ikari! You've got to believe me." She was making no impression, so she plunged on. "I had a dream. The other night. When Rei's hair grew out? I had a nightmare. I saw EVA-03…"

Gendo leaned forward and steepled his hands. He no longer looked concerned for her sanity, but genuinely interested. "Go on."

"I saw EVA-03 destroyed. It was wrecked, its head was caved in, one leg was gone. Toji…Suzuhara-kun…he was dead. He was dead." She steadied herself with both hands on his desk. "I know I sound crazy, Commander. I sound crazy to myself, but I'm telling you, there's something wrong!"

To Riana's frustration, Gendo did not move from his position. "How did, or does, Suzuhara die?" he asked.

She had to tell him the truth. "I killed him. I stabbed him to death." She hung her head. "Oh God," she said in English, "you think I'm crazy. _I_ think I'm crazy…"

Gendo said nothing. He reached over to the desk's one furnishing, an old-fashioned telephone, and picked it up. "Get me Dr. Akagi at NERV-02 Matsushiro. Immediately."

Riana glanced up. "You believe me?" Gendo spared her a glance and nothing more, so she shut her mouth.

At that moment, the alarm went off. Gendo spun in his chair and depolarized his office window, which looked out over the bridge and the Big Board. Every graph, every readout had gone red. Riana's eyes went to the live feed, which was still up. With mounting horror, she saw EVA-03's arms begin to move. Catwalks strained and ruptured.

"Abort _now!"_ Gendo shouted into the phone. "Cut all circuits!"

EVA-03's eyes began to glow. Riana's hands went to her mouth in terror as it seemed to look directly at her. The mouth unhinged, which she wasn't sure Eva mouths were supposed to. The jaw fell downwards, exposing a maw of black, steel teeth. The head tilted back, and even through the armored bridge windows, even through Gendo's phone, Riana could hear an unearthly roar, a primal scream of hunger, hatred, and agony all rolled into one.

And then the picture derezzed into static. Gendo looked at his phone; there was nothing but silence.

"Commander Ikari, Bridge," Maya reported over the office loudspeaker. "All contact has been lost with NERV-02. We've lost all telemetry from EVA-03. Trying to get a satellite feed now."

Gendo put down the phone. "Lieutenant," he addressed the unseen microphone, "recall all Eva pilots. Dispatch rescue squads and the Third Detachment to NERV-02. Sound primary battle stations." He turned to Riana. "It would appear you were correct, Pilot Arashikaze."


	5. For Whom the Bell Tolls

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry again for the very long delay between chapters. Finals were kicking my butt like Asuka does to Shinji. Hopefully this chapter makes up for the long wait, as we finally get to some combat._

 _Near Hadano, Japan_

 _9 November 2016_

 _Sure is a lot of waiting before a battle,_ Riana sighed to herself. _Feels like we've been here forever now._ She felt fidgety again, but this time there was an edge of fear: not for herself, or even for the other three Evangelion pilots, but for everyone at Matsushiro. From what little NERV had told them, the facility there had exploded. If it was anything like what had happened in Nevada, Misato and Dr. Akagi were likely dead.

And there was an Angel on the way.

That left what happened to Toji Suzuhara. If the Angel had torn its way out of EVA-03, he was probably dead too. If it had somehow possessed EVA-03, he might be still alive and trapped inside. Either way, it didn't look good.

 _God, what are we going to tell Hikari?_ Riana thought, then shook those thoughts off. She could not afford to have any extraneous thoughts going into a fight. None of them could.

To take her mind off the upcoming battle, she brought up a map in her heads-up display. The plan was simple enough, because the Angel, as usual, was being simple enough: it was making a beeline from Matsushiro to Tokyo-3, through the radioactive and flooded ruins of Old Tokyo, and across the mountains. It was taking its time, which allowed the four Evas to get into position. It was a horseshoe-shaped ambush: Asuka and Rei were on the southern side of the shoe, down behind buildings and tall trees in a suburb of Hadano. Shinji was holding a pass at the base of the shoe, near an old highway rest area. Riana, with her smaller EVA-03A, was hull-down behind a ridge. When the Angel walked into the center of the horseshoe, Shinji, Rei and Riana would engage and stop it, while Asuka came in and slammed the ambush shut from the rear. For a plan thrown together in a few moments by Commander Ikari and Vice-Commander Fuyutsuki, it was likely to work.

Riana tightened her fingers on the right control stick, and watched her Eva's right hand ape the motion around the autocannon she carried. It fired forty millimeter shells at a very rapid rate, with high explosive warheads, but that would likely do little against an AT Field. Riana knew it, and knew her role was to play distraction, to rain as many shells on the Angel as she could and give one of the others an opening if the Angel turned to engage her. So be it, she thought; she'd be the best distraction in Japan. Despite the situation, she could not help but smile a little at the mental image of her Eva with an umbrella and a top hat, dancing a soft-shoe while the Angel looked on in horror.

For the past fifteen minutes, there was nothing but silence on the radio feed. NERV was not talking, and the Eva pilots had no need to talk to each other just yet. They were together, yet alone with their thoughts.

Then the radio snapped on with a half-second of static. "Target approaching," Makato Hyuga spoke over the feed. "All units, prepare for ground battle."

* * *

Despite the LCL, Riana suddenly felt like her mouth was dry. Her skin under the plugsuit seemed to tighten, and there was the sudden need to go to the bathroom. She blew out a breath into the LCL. "Here we go," she whispered to herself. A quick look over the instrument panel: everything was green. EVA-03A was as ready as it was going to be, and its pilot had to be too. She quickly reached out and patted the top of the panel. "Let's do this, buddy." For a fleeting moment, Riana was glad that she was in this machine. Dead metal, ungainly, training wheels, whatever they wanted to call it, EVA-03A was hers.

And then she saw it as it walked between two hills.

It was EVA-03, no mistaking that. It looked much like Asuka's EVA-02, though the head was more rounded; it was painted a glossy black with white stripes bisecting its arms, though the paint was scorched and peeled in places. It was still a good few kilometers from her position—Riana still struggled converting things to metric—and it would pass Asuka's position first. Riana pulled EVA-03A down a little more behind the ridge; 03 was well out of range, and she didn't want to trip the ambush early.

Then she heard Shinji's voice over the radio. " _That's_ the target? But…that's an Eva! That's EVA-03!"

Commander Ikari broke in. "Shinji." There was a hint of sorrow in the voice. "That's no longer an Eva unit. It's an Angel now." _Shit,_ Riana thought. _Dammit! But maybe…_

"It was taken over by an Angel?" Shinji asked. "Is the pilot still inside? Asuka, can you see?"

"Can't tell from here," Asuka replied. "But if he _is_ inside, we've got to help him." There was none of the usual bravado in Asuka's voice, Riana noticed. There was genuine concern. _I guess she doesn't hate Toji, of course…or maybe she's just concerned about Hikari—_ Riana's thought was cut off by a sudden curse from Asuka: " _Ach, schiesse!"_

And then Asuka screamed, and was abruptly cut off. Then something else rang over the radio: an electronic, repeating wail. It was what Misato had called a beeper, activated automatically when a pilot ejected from an Eva.

"EVA-02 is silent! No contact! Pilot has escaped!" Shigeru Aoba reported shrilly. "Rescue squad on rendezvous!"

 _God, just like that! It took out Asuka just like that!_ Riana swallowed nervously. _How the hell did it see her? She was down behind buildings and trees—I could barely see her, even on full magnification and knowing where she was!_

"Unit-00," Commander Ikari ordered. "Avoid close combat and delay the target."

"Yes, sir." Rei's voice was as even as always, and Riana found she could take some strength from that. She wondered what it would take to rattle Rei. _What would it take to make_ you _scream, Rei?_

"Unit-03A, take over Unit-02's position to the rear. Box it in and engage at range," Ikari ordered.

Riana almost replied, then hesitated. She settled for a double-click of the radio, pilot shorthand for acknowledgement. Checking her map display, Riana decided to make an indirect approach.

"Ayanami! Arashikaze!" Shinji's voice burst through the radio. "Don't shoot yet! Wait until I get there!"

"Rei!" Gendo shouted. _"Shoot! Shoot now!"_

Riana halted, just out of gun range. She could see where Unit-00 was: down in a highway cut, behind and to the right of EVA-03. At the range she was at, there was no possibility Rei could miss. "Engaging," Rei said, but she sounded unsure. The rifle came up, pointed at the spine of EVA-03.

Rei hesitated.

* * *

EVA-03—or the Angel controlling it—didn't. Impossibly, it nearly bent double, looking between its own legs at EVA-00. It would have been comical, if not for its hellishly glowing eyes. Then, without warning, it leapt backwards, twisted in midair, and its right hand flashed forward to catch Rei's Eva by the throat. EVA-03 viciously slammed EVA-00 to the ground with enough force to shatter armor off the Eva's head module. Rei's autocannon went flying to parts unknown.

With a swiftness that surprised Riana, the left hand of EVA-00 came up to palm EVA-03's head, but it was defensive only. The chokehold did not seem to lessen, and EVA-03 was holding the other Eva down by weight and its free arm. Riana took a few steps forward and raised her own rifle. _I'm still out of range, but two more steps…_

Then Rei began to scream. The sound was so unexpected that Riana froze.

"The Angel has invaded Unit-00's left arm!" Maya Ibuki shouted over the net. "Penetrating neural nodes!"

"Sever Unit-00's left arm." Gendo's voice had barely raised.

"The neural link—"

"Cut it!" Gendo snapped.

Riana saw EVA-00's left arm blow off, with enough force that it flew a quarter of a mile and fell into someone's house. Rei's screams rose, and Riana swallowed in fear. With the neural links in place, it would feel as if someone had physically torn Rei's own arm out of its socket.

 _How did it…how did it see her?_ Riana's mind raced. _Rei was in cover, just like Asuka. It walked right past her position. It didn't react until…Rei got a lock? No...when she reported that she was engaging?_

The thought broke Riana out of her shock. Her fingers flew across the instrument panel. She shut down EVA-03A's sensors, its radar, its targeting system, even the radio. _That's how this Angel is detecting us. It's hearing our radio calls, or sensing the lock-on from our weapons. The other Angels didn't do that—I think—which means…_

Riana moved her Eva back under cover as quickly as she could. Through the trees, she could see that EVA-03 did not seem to have seen her move; it was distracted by the arrival of Shinji and EVA-01. She reached forward to switch the radio back on, then stopped herself. "Shit," she said aloud, mainly because the silence inside the Eva was suddenly oppressive. "That's your game, Angel or whatever the hell you are. You're using our own weapon against us. You're using Toji."

With careful manipulation of the control sticks and her foot pedals, she maneuvered EVA-03A back out into the open. A light began to blink on her instrument panel; NERV was trying to contact her. She ignored it. Riana divided her attention between minute adjustments to her Eva and what was happening to Shinji.

* * *

Shinji, in words Riana's grandmother would use, was getting his ass kicked. EVA-03 leapt into the air and delivered a devastating kick to EVA-01's chest. Shinji rolled with it, tearing through a housing subdivision in the process, but as he got back to his feet, EVA-03 crouched for another attack, like a predator sensing prey. Shinji made no effort to attack or evade, and EVA-03 did not give him the opportunity, even if he had wanted to. In yet another impossible move, its arms stretched out to twice their length, seized EVA-01 by the throat, and squeezed. Riana knew that, again through the neural link, Shinji would be feeling as if he was actually being strangled. EVA-01 was driven back into the side of a mountain. One part of Riana's mind wanted Shinji to fight back, but another, colder part hoped he'd distract EVA-03 just a little longer.

Since the Angel's attention was now entirely on EVA-01, she could move faster. Riana dropped the rifle and drew the sonic glaive from EVA-03A's back. She would get one chance at this, which meant she had to aim for the base of EVA-03's neck. With any luck, it would sever the Eva's spine, which would have much the same effect as it did on a human. Of course, Riana mused morosely to herself, that assumed that the Angel/Eva did not have an AT Field worth speaking of, that it didn't detect her coming, and that she didn't manage to kill Toji in the process. _Holding a spear, getting ready to stab Toji. Fuck you, dream._

* * *

EVA-03 was now smashing EVA-01's head against the hill with all its force. The latter had gone slack. If Shinji had not lost consciousness, he soon would. Riana knew it was now or never. She slammed both feet down on the pedals. Almost as if EVA-03A sensed the urgency of the moment, it surged ahead. Luckily, EVA-03 had been nice enough to stay in a direct line for her charge. Riana watched the speedometer spin upwards and bury itself in the red. "Faster, dammit!" she shouted. She was practically standing on the pedals now. The landscape was a blur as it went by; she could see earth and trees flying upwards as she blasted through them. EVA-03 filled her visual feed. Instinctively, she lowered her head. One way or the other, she was going to hit _something._

EVA-03A hit EVA-03 at nearly a hundred kilometers per hour. If there was an AT Field, Riana did not notice it. The glaive tore through armor, the Eva's spine, and its chest to come out the other side. Riana's momentum was such that the tip of the glaive struck the chest plates of EVA-01 before it stopped.

EVA-03 arched its back and let out an inhuman wail of pain. This time, adrenaline surging through her system, Riana did not fear it. She found herself grinning at it. "That's right, you asshole!" she shouted. "You _can_ be hurt!" Her hands slammed back both control sticks, and the glaive was withdrawn from EVA-03, tearing out an even larger hole. It flopped down to a kneeling position, but Riana knew that she could not hesitate. It had to be stopped. She jammed the glaive into the ground, grabbed EVA-03 by the face and the neck, and slammed it backwards into the ground with as much force as possible. It tried to sit up, so Riana punched it in the teeth. "Stay down, motherfucker!" Quickly, she moved EVA-03A around and knelt on EVA-03's chest. Though 03A was smaller, it was heavier because it used more steel than the composites of the production and preproduction Evas. With more delicacy than even she thought she was capable of, Riana grabbed the back carapace that covered the entry plug and began peeling it back. Something viscous dripped onto EVA-03A's hands, but Riana forced herself to ignore it. It did not seem to be causing her machine any harm.

Now she could see the top of the entry plug. NERV had tried to eject it, but it was covered in more of the mucus—Riana could not think of a better name for it—that was holding down the carapace. She did not want to chance her own control of EVA-03A's fingers and so did not pull the plug out; there was too much chance she would crush the plug and Toji with it. _God, I'm sorry, Toji…it must hurt like a son of a bitch for me to stab you like that. Let me get you out of here and you can punch me in the face if you like. You don't hit girls, but I'm going to make an exception…come on, you bastard!_ Finally the carapace tore free, exposing more of the plug.

Suddenly EVA-03 moved. Both hands came up and grabbed EVA-03A by the throat. Riana felt the entry plug shake with the impact, and damage sensors began to warble at her as EVA-03 squeezed, as it had with EVA-01. Armor plates began to buckle. Riana shook her head. "Nice try, jerk," she said, looking at the face of her enemy in front of her. "But my Eva doesn't work like that." She left off the carapace, reached up, and grabbed the wrists of EVA-03. "Feel free to jump in here anytime, Shinji!" she shouted, but then realized her radio was still off. There was no time to switch it on, so she twisted the control sticks in opposite directions, and slowly, with the audible sound of protesting servomotors and screech of steel on steel, pried EVA-03's hands off her Eva. She continued to apply pressure and began to twist EVA-03A's wrists, which could rotate 360 degrees. EVA-03's could not. "Sorry, Toji," she said, and pressed down on the finger buttons harder. Finally, the last bit of composite bone gave way and EVA-03's wrists were snapped at the base. Both hands suddenly drooped like a marionette with its strings cut, and a fluid very much like blood poured from where EVA-03's artificial bones now protruded through the skin.

EVA-03 tried to rise, but it was much weaker now. Riana ignored its feeble attempts to throw her off, reached out with 03A's hands, and did her best to pull away the mucus and expose the entry plug. Finally, she spared a moment to flick on the radio. "Maya? Commander Ikari? Try to eject the entry plug on EVA-03. I think I've got it loose enough."

There was a pause in transmission, long enough for Riana to wonder if her radio had been damaged. "Roger, 03A," Maya finally replied. There was a pause. "Ejection failed. Rockets have already fired. Switching to backups." The entry plug suddenly popped out like a cork from a champagne bottle, but with no real speed behind it; it landed more or less softly in a mound of dirt from a torn up playground. "Ejection successful."

"I think the Angel's dead too," Riana reported. At least EVA-03 had slumped. It was not even stirring now. "I can punch it a few more times to be sure."

"That won't be necessary, Riana." Her eyes widened: Gendo had never used her name like that before. There was almost affection in it. "Target is silent. Well done."

Riana felt a stupd grin on her face and did not care. "Well, hot damn." She didn't care if everyone at NERV heard that. They'd won.

"Stand by for a diagnostic sweep of your Eva."

"Um…sure." Other than some armor damage around her neck, her own instruments showed no damage. She even still had a full magazine of missiles. While she waited, Riana opened a link to EVA-01. "Hey, Shinji. You okay? Sorry that took so long. I had to make sure the bastard wasn't watching me." There was no response. "Shinji? EVA-01?"

"Pilot Ikari is all right," Shigeru cut in. "Stay off the radio for a bit, Riana. We're running diagnostics right now."

"Oh, okay. You bet."

Riana sat there in silence for another few minutes. She saw rescue teams come over the hill, clad in protective gear. They scrambled over the wrecked playground and pieces of EVA-03 to the entry plug. As she watched, one tore open a panel and pulled a lanyard; the hatch on the plug blew open. Two more reached inside and pulled out the limp body of Toji Suzuhara. They swiped off LCL and more of the mucus from his body. _Oh, God, no,_ Riana thought, with a cold feeling in her stomach, _the Angel_ did _infect him._ She saw one of the rescue team begin chest compressions as they lay Toji on a stretcher; another began cutting open the plugsuit with a knife as a third readied an IV.

Riana reached forward and began searching for the right frequency for the rescue team. She found it after a few moments. "Left leg appears to be broken," one of the team droned. "Possibly a concussion as well—some minor cranial trauma there—"

"Never mind that!" Riana recognized Fuyutsuki's voice. "Is Pilot Suzuhara alive?"

"No heart sounds. Continuing chest compressions."

Another of the rescuers reached up and grabbed his helmet. "Doc, I can give mouth-to-mouth—"

"Negative," Gendo snapped. "Too much chance of infection."

Riana watched with growing horror as the rescue team brought out paddles. They had cut the plugsuit away completely from Toji's torso, and the paddles were applied directly. "Clear," the medic warned, and Toji's body jumped.

"No heart sounds. Nothing," the first team member reported.

"Try again. Clear." Another jump. "Anything?"

"No, Doctor."

They tried once more. Then more of the chest compressions. Then another jolt of the paddles. For the fourth time, Riana heard the words "No heart sounds."

The medic stood up. "I'm calling it. Any objections?" There were none. "NERV, this is Rescue Team Three. Resucitation has failed. The pilot is deceased. The time is 18:08 local."

"Understood," Gendo replied. "Begin quarantine procedure."

Riana sat and stared. "Diagnostic complete," Maya told her, but she had to repeat it before Riana acknowledged. "Your EVA shows no signs of infection. We'll run it through more tests when you get back, and you'll have to stay in the infirmary for observation. It'll just be overnight, and we'll make sure you get a steak or something…"

Riana realized that Maya was just trying to distract her. "Maya," she interrupted. "Pilot Suzuhara…Toji…"

"He's gone," Maya said. Her voice broke on the last word. "I'm sorry, Riana. Toji's dead. Come on back. We'll sort it all out here."

A communication window suddenly popped up on the left side of her visual feed. It was Shinji. "You fucking murderer, you _killed_ him!"

Riana's mouth opened and closed without sound coming out. Before Shinji could say anything else, Gendo Ikari's voice silenced his son: "The useless pilot should just sit and be quiet."


	6. Shattered Dreams

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hopefully this works. The site is having troubles right now updating chapters. In any case, I enjoyed writing the last chapter so much that I decided to get this one written and up as well. As usual, there's some shout-outs in this one-to Top Gun and Game of Thrones, weirdly enough. They're fairly subtle. I also made up more backstory for Hikari Horaki and her family, which is rarely if ever mentioned in the Evangelion anime and manga._

 _I'd say enjoy, but this chapter is depressing._

 _The Geofront_

 _Tokyo-3, Japan_

 _9 November 2016_

Riana Arashikaze leaned against the sink. It was full of cold water. She took a deep breath and dunked her head into it, immersed herself in it.

 _Toji's dead._

The words echoed in her mind.

 _And I killed him._

She pulled her head out of the water and let out the breath. The water cascaded down her face, down the gray plugsuit, to drip on the floor. It made her feel a little better, to clear her head.

Riana heard the locker room door open and looked up, into the mirror. It was Rei and Asuka. Rei held back slightly, but even though Asuka walked up next to her, her normal swagger was gone. There was a bandage on her forehead, a souvenir of the hurried ejection from EVA-02. She opened her mouth, hesitated, then met Riana's eyes. "Are you okay?" It was said with the closest thing to friendliness Asuka had ever shown her.

"Yeah. My Eva barely took any damage."

"I mean…you."

"I guess."

Asuka paused again. "Toji's dead." She looked away, into the mirror.

"I know." Riana mopped her face with a towel. "Did they tell you what he died of?" _Aside from me?_

"Massive cardiac arrest," Rei put in. Even her normal monotone seemed to waver a little. "He was fully linked to EVA-03. When his Eva was attacked, all the damage was transmitted neurally to his body through the link. His body could not stand it, and—"

Riana held up a hand. "Don't tell me anymore, Rei. Please." She sat down heavily on the bench between the sinks and the lockers.

Rei walked up to her, and after a moment, put a hand on Riana's shoulder. The gesture of sympathy, so out of character for Ayanami, was enough to bring a soft smile to Riana's lips. She reached up and patted the hand. Asuka leaned against the sink, not willing to go that far. "Wasn't your fault," she said into the quiet. "You had to do it. I was…I was out, Rei was out, Shinji…well, you had to," Asuka finished lamely.

"How is Shinji?" Riana asked.

"In the infirmary. They had to forcibly remove him from the entry plug."

"What?" Riana's head came up. "Why?"

Asuka shrugged. "He went nuts. I thought you knew."

"No. Commander Ikari ordered Unit-01 to go down first after decontam. I had to wait better part of an hour, and they sent me off to the reserve bay. I just got here fifteen minutes ago."

"Well, after they got his Eva locked down, Shinji just went bonkers and tore out of the bay. The Commander turned up his LCL compression to maximum, and Shinji passed out." Another shrug. "That's probably the end for him, you know. I bet he doesn't recover as a pilot. That idiot's nerves are more fragile than ours."

Rei took her hand off Riana's shoulder, leaving warmth behind, and opened her locker. "He has not regained consciousness."

"He will," Asuka told her. "He's not physically hurt. He just couldn't handle it."

"He called me a murderer," Riana said softly. "Maybe I am."

Asuka stared at her for a moment. Her right hand came up as if to slap the other girl, then dropped to her side. "Stop it, Sister Riana. Knock off the martyr shit. If Baka Shinji had done his job, then maybe Toji would be still alive." She jumped over the bench and tore open her locker. Asuka's school uniform was thrown onto the bench. She reached up to depressurize the plugsuit, then suddenly delivered a vicious kick to her locker's door, putting a huge dent in it. "Fucking _bastard!"_ she shouted, in English. Riana didn't know who the curse was directed at—Shinji, Gendo Ikari, the Angel, Toji, Riana, or even Asuka herself.

With nothing else to do, Riana turned and opened her locker as well. In silence, the three girls stripped off their plugsuits and put their school uniforms back on. As she hung up her plugsuit, Riana could take it no longer. "Who's going to tell her?" she asked.

"Who's going to tell who?" Asuka replied.

"Hikari." Riana was too mentally tired to bother with honorifics. "She deserves to know."

"Oh." Asuka looked at her shoes.

"I'll do it." Riana's voice surprised even herself. "I should do it."

"No, I'm Hikari's friend," Asuka protested. "I'll do it—"

"I said I'll do it." Riana did not raise her voice, but the steel in it stopped even Asuka from further protest.

They left the locker room to find Maya Ibuki waiting for them. "Sorry to do this," she said, "but Commander Ikari wants to see you, Riana."

"Shit," Riana said under her breath, in English, but Maya heard her. "That's a pretty good description of the situation, actually. Follow me." To the others, she said, "By the way, Shinji's awake. The Commander wants to see him too." Her eyes flicked between the three girls. "He said specifically that it was just supposed to be Shinji and Riana. No one else. Sorry."

Rei looked a little disappointed—at least Riana thought she did—but Asuka sighed. "Might as well go grab some lunch, then." As Maya led Riana off, Asuka called out, "Hey, Sister Riana!"

"Yeah?"

Asuka gave her a half-smile, then a thumbs-up. "Good luck, Sister Riana."

Riana could not help but smile back. "Thanks."

* * *

Maya led Riana to the corridor outside Gendo Ikari's office, but to their surprise, they found Ryoji Kaji and Shinji coming from the opposite direction, from the infirmary. Riana brought up a hand to wave hello, not trusting herself to speak, but Shinji looked away. "I'll handle it," Kaji told Maya, who was all too happy to agree.

The three of them entered Ikari's office. If anything, it seemed more sinister than usual. Riana realized that it had been less than six hours since the last time she was in here, when she had pleaded with Gendo to end EVA-03's startup test—the one thing that would have definitely saved Toji's life. Still, she did not blame Gendo for that. By the time she herself realized her dream would come true, it was probably too late. _And it came true,_ Riana thought to herself, _oh, boy, did it come true._

Gendo peered at them over his laptop. Kaji stopped in the middle of the office, in the blood red circle on the floor, and Riana did the same. Shinji took a few more steps forward and stood at defiant attention. He was still in his hospital pajamas and slippers, but it gave him an odd sort of dignity—a wounded warrior. Gendo adjusted his glasses and went back to typing. "You look better than I expected," he said to Shinji, offhand. He typed for a few minutes more, then saved whatever he was doing and closed the laptop. "Now then." Gendo assumed his usual position, hands folded in front of him. "Shall we look at what you did, Pilot Ikari? Destruction of NERV property, in that you wrecked the primary launch bay. Willful possession of an Eva for personal use, in that you were going to try and smash through to the Geofront, to get to me, I assume. And finally…and most importantly…breach of lawful orders. You were ordered to engage the Angel that possessed EVA Unit-03, and you refused. You were ordered to stand down in the launch bay, which you also refused. What do you have to say for yourself?"

Riana saw Shinji's fists clench. "What do I have to say for myself? Don't you have something to say to _me,_ father?" Riana blinked in surprise. She had never heard Shinji use that tone of voice to anyone, much less his father.

Gendo seemed surprised as well. For a moment, he said nothing. "What are you talking about?" he finally asked.

"You ordered me to kill—"

Gendo seemed to sense where Shinji's question was headed, and cut him off. "That's enough. I'm asking the questions here."

Shinji suddenly dashed forward to leap across his father's desk, fists raised to smash Gendo in the face. Only his slippers skidding on the floor gave Riana a chance to stop him. She threw herself at Shinji's legs and managed to wrap him up in a clumsy tackle. Both of them went to the floor, but Shinji squirmed free, and with an inarticulate strangled shout of rage, swung at her—and connected. Riana saw stars for a moment and fell backwards, her hands going to her nose.

Then Kaji was there. " _Shinji!"_ he shouted. "Stop it! _Stop it!_ " He got his arms under Shinji's and held the boy back in a half-nelson. "Stop it," he repeated, "nothing good will come of this!"

"Let me go!" Shinji screamed. He managed to get an arm free, and half-dragged Kaji a step forward towards the desk. "I'll kill him! _I'll kill him!"_ Kaji finally got hold of Shinji's wrists and pulled them down. He held them until Shinji slumped in his hands. Riana shook her head free of the cobwebs, and tenderly felt her nose. Her fingers came away bloody, but it did not feel broken.

"I don't…I can't do this anymore," Shinji said quietly. "I don't want to pilot Eva anymore. I don't want to stay here anymore." He looked up at Gendo, teeth bared. "I never want to see your damn face again."

Gendo stared back. For a moment, the two Ikaris held each other's gaze. "Fine," Gendo said at last. "Get out. Go back to where you came from. You have your wish. I doubt we'll see each other again." Shinji just stared back, and after a minute, Gendo raised an eyebrow. "Well?"

Shinji turned and walked away. He paused and glanced at Riana. "I'm sorry I hit you. I'm sorry for what I said earlier. You didn't kill Toji." Shinji threw once last hate-filled look towards his father. " _He_ did." And with that, Shinji was gone.

* * *

Kaji helped Riana to her feet. The blood from her nose had already stopped, though her fingers were bloody and there were spots on her blouse. She drew herself to attention with all the dignity she could muster. "You wanted to see me, Commander?"

Gendo was still staring at the door to his office. He shook his head minutely, then faced her. "Yes, Pilot Arashikaze. I wanted to commend you on your actions today." He held up a hand to stop her protest. "I know what you are thinking, and of course I heard what Pilot… _former_ Pilot Ikari just said. That aside, you stopped the Angel from getting any further, and neutralized the target. The death of Pilot Suzuhara was unfortunate, but also unavoidable."

"There must have been another way," Riana said quietly.

"Then tell me what it was." Gendo waited, and when Riana did not—could not—answer, he gave a short nod. "We did have a backup plan. However, I am glad we did not have to activate it. The outcome might have been, shall we say, unpredictable." Another short nod. "You have done well, Riana Arashikaze. I would say that you have more than made up for your earlier immaturity and infractions."

A month before, Riana reflected, she probably would have nearly killed someone for such a compliment. Now she felt nothing. She had won, but it was the most empty and bitter prize imaginable. "Thank you, sir," she managed.

"Dismissed, Pilot Arashikaze."

Riana hesitated. "Commander, will I be piloting EVA-01 now?"

"No. I think we'll keep you in Unit 03A. You seem to have mastered it, despite its limitations. I will look into upgrading it as much as possible." Gendo opened his laptop. "You may not consider that much of a reward, but Unit 03A saved your life today. Because it lacks certain… _aspects_ of the Eva series, the Angel could not infect 03A as it did Unit 03 and attempted to do with Unit 00. Apparently the Angel was too weak to deploy an AT Field. That may not be the case in the future, but given your talents, that may no longer be an obstacle." He stared at her over his gloves. "Will there be anything else, Pilot Arashikaze?"

"No, sir."

"If you have any more of those dreams, please do not hesitate to inform myself or Dr. Akagi. Oh, yes—you will be glad to know that she and Major Katsuragi survived the Matsushiro explosion. The Major is slightly wounded, but will make a full recovery."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." She bowed and followed Kaji out. When the door closed behind them, Kaji put an arm around her shoulders. "What have I done, Mr. Kaji?"

"What you had to do." Kaji patted her shoulder, like an uncle to a favorite niece.

"Yeah. I guess."

"You want me to take you home?"

Riana stared at her bloody blouse. "If you don't mind. But would you mind taking me somewhere else afterwards?"

Kaji led her away from Gendo's office. "Sure."

* * *

The sun had already gone down by the time Kaji and Riana reached Hikari Horaki's home. Riana told Kaji he could head back to NERV, but he agreed to wait for her. Riana took a deep breath and knocked on the door of the Horakis, a house in the eastern suburbs of Tokyo-3.

The door opened, but it was not Hikari; it was an older version of her, a little taller and with the curves of a grown woman, wearing the uniform of a waitress. "Hello? May I help you?"

Riana remembered something about Hikari's mother being dead. "Uh, yes. I'm Riana Arashikaze, one of your younger sister's classmates. Hikari-san, I mean."

"Oh." The older sister—at least Riana assumed it was—smiled. "One moment." She yelled back over her shoulder. "Hey, Hikari! Your friend is here!" She turned back to Riana. "Why don't you come in for a moment?"

"Uh, sure." Riana walked in, shuffled off her shoes, and stood on the one step leading into the house's main corridor. She could see open doors to either side, and from one of them wafted the smell of chicken. Riana's stomach rumbled dangerously, reminding her that the only thing she had eaten since breakfast was LCL.

"My friend? Is it—" Hikari walked out of the kitchen, dressed in an apron. "Oh! Hello, Riana-san. What brings you out here?"

Riana steeled herself to tell her. _Just come out and say it, straight, like Asuka did,_ she told herself. _That's the best way. Make the first cut the sharpest, and the others won't hurt as much._ But when she opened her mouth, the words would not come. Instead, she said, "I…can we speak in private, Hikari-san?"

Hikari looked puzzled, but her bright smile remained in place. "Sure. We can talk in my room. This is my older sister, by the way—Kodama. My younger sister Nozomi is around here somewhere—"

"I'm in here watching anime!" The voice that was obviously Nozomi's came from the living room.

"Well, get off your butt and get our guest and Hikari something to drink!" Kodama shouted. "You go on, Hikari. I'll keep an eye on the chicken." She made shooing motions.

Riana followed Hikari to the end of the hall, stomach churning with both the need to eat and what she was going to have to say. She knew that, for a brief, few more seconds, Hikari was still all right with the world, and Riana was about to destroy it. She wondered if Toji's father already knew; NERV would send an official representative to him, probably with a letter of condolence and maybe some death benefits. No one would be coming to tell Hikari, which was why Riana had volunteered. She was wishing she _had_ let Asuka do it; Asuka was closer to Hikari, after all…

Riana inwardly shook her head. She remembered one of her grandmother's sayings: _They who pass the sentence should swing the sword._ It was supposedly an old saying of the Arashikazes, though Rissa was known to appropriate freely. Riana had passed the sentence, Riana had swung the sword, and therefore it was Riana who must be the one who told Hikari.

* * *

Hikari's room was beautiful. It was not surprising that it was meticulously clean, given Hikari's personality; Riana was sure she could bounce a yen coin off Hikari's bedcovers. In shelves across the room's walls were dolls from all over the world. "That's quite the collection," Riana said.

"Yes. My father's in the Japanese Naval Self-Defense Force; he collected them for us after Second Impact. That's why I have to cook for us…he's not home very much. My sister Kodama works at Anna Miller's." Hikari sat down on her bed and motioned Riana to a chair. Her smile faded. "I have the feeling that you're not here with good news, Riana-san."

Riana let out a long breath. It was time. "No, Hikari-san, I'm not. Suzuhara-san…Toji…" Riana could not finish the sentence.

"Suzuhara-san?" Hikari's puzzled look returned. "What's this got to do with him? I thought it was Asuka."

 _Oh God,_ Riana thought in horror, _she doesn't even know. Toji never told her. Why would he? It was supposed to be secret._ "No, it's not Asuka," Riana told her. "Listen, did Suzuhara…oh, dammit, did _Toji_ tell you what he was going to be doing today?" Suddenly Riana was tired of all the Japanese honorifics and etiquette.

"No. He said he had to do something, but then we'd be getting together tomorrow…"

"I shouldn't be telling you this," Riana said, "but you'd know anyway, sooner or later. Toji became an Eva pilot. He was chosen for Evangelion training."

" _Him?!_ "

Riana could not help but smile a little. "I know, right? Toji wasn't what you'd call Eva material, but…" At the ashen look on Hikari's face, Riana knew that her use of the past tense had been noticed. Riana felt her lower lip begin to tremble, and smacked a fist on her knee to stop it. She forced the words out. "Hikari, he's dead. Toji's dead."

"Dead? Suzuhara?" Hikari blinked. "But…I don't understand…"

"His Eva. There was…there was an accident…" Riana knew she couldn't tell Hikari everything, about the Angels and such, mainly because there was so little she knew herself. "But he…he…"

Hikari reached out and took Riana's hands. "Tell me, Riana. Please."

"I…I can't. Not everything. But…he died, Hikari. We tried…Shinji, Asuka, Rei, me…we tried. But there was nothing...we could..." The dam burst. Riana started sobbing. Not just for Toji; in a moment of clarity in her apartment, Riana realized that, though Toji was a friend, she didn't know him that well after all. She didn't know his sister's name, or his father's, or what they did, or where the Suzuharas lived. Other than sports, she didn't even know what Toji did, other than hang out with Kensuke Aida. "Oh, God," Riana said aloud. "I'm going to have to tell Kensuke, too."

The sobs were not just for Toji. They were for Shinji, whose life was ruined, if it had ever been anything _but_ ruined. They were for Kensuke, who had just lost his best friend and didn't even know it yet. They were for Suzuhara's family. They were for Hikari. And they were for Riana herself, a girl who had killed before she even became a woman. _A true virgin killer,_ she thought bitterly.

Hikari gathered Riana in her arms and brought her over to the bed. Riana cried into her shoulder, great heaving sobs that she could not stop. "Oh, God, oh Jesus, Hikari…I killed him, I killed him, I killed him..." It was said in English, and Hikari did not quite understand the words. She did not need to. There were tears on her cheeks too—for possibilities that were now gone, for a crush that had become love, and would never become more. But Hikari Horaki's strength was to be strong for others, and it served her well now as she rocked Riana like a baby, unconsciously brushing the other girl's hair as they cried.


	7. To Die For

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: Again, sorry for the long hiatus between chapters. I managed to get so sick I ended up in the hospital. Hopefully the next chapter doesn't take so long._

 _First Municipal Junior High School, Tokyo-3_

 _10 November 2016_

 _If I didn't have enough damn problems,_ Riana thought to herself, _I'm late for class._ She jogged down the street and slurped down a fruit cup. _If this was an anime, and it shouldn't be because it's too frigging depressing, I'd have a piece of toast in my mouth, and I'd run down my one true love or something…_

Riana did not run down anything, but she made it to school just as the morning bell chimed. She dashed into the front hall, where the students' shoe lockers were located. She needed to change out of her street shoes into her school slip-ons, then report to the front office. Even as unconscious as the Class 2-A teacher seemed to be most of the time, he would definitely notice her tardiness. Even if he didn't, Hikari would, and even in her grief over Toji, she would dutifully log in Riana as being late.

She tossed the empty cup into the garbage with one hand, while she shoved her street shoes into the locker with the other. Riana then moved quickly around the corner towards the corridor and collided with Shinji Ikari.

Neither dropped their bookbag or fell to the floor; the impact wasn't that strong. Instead they both stepped back, mumbled an apology, and then recognized who the other was. Riana quickly took in the full backpack. "So," she said awkwardly, "you're, um…you're leaving, then?"

"Yeah. Just cleaned out my desk and picked up a few things," he answered. There was silence for a few moments, then Shinji said, "I don't blame you for what happened."

"You said that yesterday."

"Wasn't sure if you believed me."

"I do." Riana paused. "I wish you weren't leaving, Shinji-san."

Shinji looked at his shoes. "I have to. I can't work for Da—that guy anymore. I'm tired of doing what everyone wants me to do."

"But you're good at it. Piloting the Eva." Riana knew this was the wrong place for this conversation, if there ever would be a right place for it, and it was probably the wrong words.

"I hate it, Riana-san. I hate every bit of it. I'll never pilot Eva again." It was said with utter finality.

Riana slowly nodded. "I guess I understand, Shinji. They're not giving me EVA-01. I'm still going to be piloting my old clunker." Shinji said nothing. Riana realized that he had stopped caring about anything that happened with NERV. "Well…take care of yourself, huh?"

Shinji gave her the ghost of a smile. "You too."

Impulsively, Riana reached out and gave him a hug. He hesitated, then returned it, but there was no warmth in it; it was like hugging a corpse. Riana wondered if that was what Shinji was: the walking dead, still breathing, but dead inside. Then before she teared up, she broke off the hug and walked away.

* * *

She entered the front office, where the matronly Miss Moroboshi was doing her usual morning routine of stamping papers. Riana mused that if an Angel stomped through First Municipal Junior High, Moroboshi would just keep stamping papers. She did look up and give Riana her usual, honest friendly smile. "Good morning, Arashikaze-kun."

"Good morning, Moroboshi-san. I wanted to report that I'm running a little tardy this morning. I overslept."

"Oh. Well, you needn't worry, Arashikaze-kun. You're excused from class today."

Riana was taken aback. "Really? I'm not sick."

"Nothing like that. NERV called. They said you were to have the day off. They didn't tell me why, only that you needed it." She consulted a note. "It was…oh yes, it was Major Katsuragi that called."

Riana smiled. _Good old Misato. Watching out for me. She probably figured I needed a day to come to terms with…all of it._

"Unless you want to go to class today," Moroboshi added.

"No, ma'am. If NERV wants me to take the day off, they have a good reason." Riana bowed respectfully, then noticed Kazuko Bishamon's door was closed. "Moroboshi-san, is Principal Bishamon in today?"

"Oh, no. She called in again this morning. She's still sick with the flu, unfortunately."

"Maybe she would appreciate a visitor." Riana thought that if there was anyone who would understand what she was going through, it would be Kazuko. That thought reminded Riana that she still needed to call her grandmother; after coming home from Hikari's the night before, she had eaten a quick dinner and gone to bed. "Do you have any papers that need to be taken to her?"

Moroboshi's smile widened. "I do!" She got up and handed Riana a thick, bound folder. "You're such a dear, Arashikaze-kun. Thank you."

"It's no trouble, Moroboshi-san." Riana bowed again and left the school, after changing shoes. It was a rather pretty day, and despite everything, the sun felt good.

* * *

Kazuko lived in the more upscale section of Tokyo-3, towards the mountains; nestled between two ridges, it was relatively safe from any Angel attacks—in theory. Riana had been there a few times, after school, since they sometimes used Kazuko's small, fenced-in yard to spar in. She made good money as a principal, and Riana suspected Kazuko also drew some sort of pension from the Japanese government, from her days in special forces. It was a nice looking home: not large, but two-story, with large windows in the front, a low wall separating it from the sidewalk, and a balcony in the back with a nice view of the mountains.

The blinds were drawn on the windows, on both stories. _That's odd,_ Riana thought. _Usually Kazuko has them open._ She opened the gate, walked up the short steps to the front door, and rang the doorbell. There was no answer. Riana tried to look through the windows, but the blinds were opaque. _Maybe she's out of town? She used the flu excuse to leave Tokyo-3 for awhile? No…she'd have no reason to lie about that. She could just take some time off. Nobody would care._ Riana went back to the door, rang the doorbell, and knocked as loud as she could. If Kazuko _did_ have the flu, she was going to be angry, but she would answer the door. Riana had a sudden, terrible thought: what if Kazuko was deathly sick? What if she couldn't call for an ambulance and was just lying there in bed, helpless? Riana had seen that before, in one of the older nuns at the convent: the old woman had suffered a stroke, but no one found her for hours. Kazuko was younger, but still…

Before Riana could get her cellphone out, the door opened. It was not Kazuko, but a tall man in casual clothes. "Who are you?" he demanded.

Riana bowed quickly. "My name is Riana Arashikaze. I'm one of Principal Bishamon's students at First Municipal. I came to deliver some papers, and check on her."

The man stared at her for a moment, obviously taking in the school uniform. "She's not here, but you can leave the papers with me."

"And you are, sir?" Riana asked.

"The caretaker. Principal Bishamon's out of town."

Alarm bells went off in Riana's mind. If Kazuko was out of town, why had she called in sick that morning? She studied the man, tried to think how her grandmother would think. There was nothing about his clothes that seemed sinister, and nothing to show that he was armed. Kazuko shouldn't need a caretaker, but it was possible. _Maybe she's so sick she went to another town? She told me she has some relatives in Tokyo-2, once._

Then Riana noticed it, the piece that screamed something was very wrong. The man was wearing gloves. Not medical gloves, but black, leather gloves, like motorcycle gloves. It was a warm day in Tokyo-3, and there was no reason to wear gloves.

 _Unless you don't want to leave fingerprints._

Riana quickly smiled to cover her shock. "Very well, mister, uh, Caretaker-san." She handed the folder over. "When will she be back in town?"

"Soon. Is there anything else?" The voice was unfriendly.

"Nope! Thank you!" Riana bowed, turned and walked away towards the gate. The door slammed shut behind her, but she was careful to watch the front windows as she walked down the sidewalk, away from the house. Sure enough, the blinds twitched: she was being watched. _And why would a caretaker do that?_

Riana got out of sight of Kazuko's house, and sat on a bus bench to consider her options. She pulled out her cellphone. _I should call the police. But what am I going to say? "Hi, this is one of the Eva pilots, and I think my principal has been kidnapped." Yeah, right. They'd never believe me._ She looked at the phone. _Call NERV? Maybe Major Katsuragi would know what to do. They could send a team out here, and—_

"That's it!" Riana said aloud. She put her cellphone away, waited five minutes, then walked back towards Kazuko's house. She opened the gate again, reached down, and picked up a good size paving stone; Kazuko used them to line her little garden. Then, with as much strength as she could muster, she hurled it through the front window.

Now the clock was running. As fast as she could, Riana dashed around one side of the house, squeezing through the narrow space between house and fence. She emerged in the tiny backyard, took a quick look around, then jumped for the lower balcony rail. Riana grabbed the rungs and pulled herself up, then threw herself over the rail onto the balcony floor. As she had guessed, whoever was in the house had left the balcony door unlocked. Also as Riana had guessed, whoever was in the house had run downstairs to investigate the broken window.

She opened the balcony door as quietly as she could. It led into Kazuko's bedroom, decorated with souvenirs of a military career that had taken her around the world. Riana stepped into the room, looked at the bed, and gasped.

Kazuko was strapped to the bed, wrists and ankles. She was naked, but it was hard to tell through all the bruises and blood. Her once attractive face was swollen and misshapen, both eyes closed behind a mask of dried blood. She did not move, and Riana could not tell if she was even still alive. As Riana took a step forward, unsure of what to do next, a shadow fell across the bed.

Riana had _not_ guessed that there was more than one person in the house.

She sensed the punch coming before it hit, which allowed her to roll with it. She still ended up on Kazuko's carpet, blinking away stars. Standing over her was a man about Kaji's size, but a lot more muscular. He wore a coverall, and his hands were gloved as well—but the gloves were reinforced, like a mixed martial artist's. This man was clearly here to hurt people, and now he moved to hurt Riana.

"Who the hell are you?" he shouted.

Riana could not think of anything pithy, so she scrambled away, sliding on her rear. When the man reached for her legs, she kicked viciously—Riana was not going to do any damage, but her flailing kept him from getting a good grip. More by luck than design, she got in a good kick that sent the man a few steps back, clutching a sore knee, and that gave Riana a moment to scramble to her feet. There was a small table in the room. Riana put it between them. When the assassin—that was what Riana thought of him as—came close, she rammed one corner of the table into his stomach.

Had Riana been stronger, it might have been excruciatingly painful to her attacker. At fourteen years old, however, Riana was not particularly strong. The most she got was a grunt. He then flung the table aside. Frantically looking for a weapon, her hands closed around a lamp. She threw it at him. The assassin simply knocked it aside.

Riana realized she had made a fatal mistake. She was not up against a mugger, or Asuka in the training room, but against a trained killer who had no problem with murdering a teenage girl. Her only chance now was to buy time.

She feinted to the left, then dashed to the right. Two more steps and she might have gotten clear, but a hand swept out, caught her by the front of her shirt, and threw her back to the carpet. Before she could get away again, the assassin's hands closed around her throat and began to squeeze.

Riana gasped as she tried to gulp down air. She gagged, and felt her eyes began to bulge. Her lungs felt on fire as she was no longer able to exhale. The man tightened the pressure, and blackness appeared on the edges of her vision. Frantically, with her last reserves, Riana tried to ram her fingers into his eyes, but she was so weak that it turned into almost a caress of his scalp. The blackness began to spread. She squeezed his skull, but he gave no sign that he even noticed.

 _Don't wanna die can't die not gonna die_

Abruptly the pressure around her throat lessened. Riana looked up and saw that something was happening. Her fingers dug into the assassin's skin. His hands reached up and grabbed her wrists, and it should have been easy for him to pull away her hands, but he frantically scrabbled at them as she had been doing only a second before. His skin began to turn a yellowish-gray. The hands fell away from hers and clutched at his chest, and as quickly as it had started, the man collapsed on top of her, gasping for breath, spittle foaming at his lips. Riana, gasping for breath herself, let him go and managed to squirm out from under the man, who had stopped moving.

Then there was another man in the room. Riana recognized the "caretaker," and unlike the man at her feet, he had a gun. He looked at the assassin on the floor, then at her, and he turned purple with rage. The gun barrel raised, and Riana, on the verge of passing out, could do nothing but stare down it. "You fucking little bitch—"

There was an explosion of noise—two of them. Riana did not feel the hammer blow of a bullet, but she felt the wetness of blood on her cheek. The "caretaker" dropped to his knees, the gun fell to the carpet, and his hands alternated between the spreading red underneath his shirt to the larger hole in his throat. He fell forward onto the other man, and Kazuko's carpet was stained further with dark red blood.

Standing on the threshold of the door to the balcony was yet another tall, muscular man—but this one wore a business suit and a tie that was askew, and sunglasses and black slacks. Riana reflected that NERV really needed to make their security personnel look less like security personnel.

"What the hell are you playing at, girl?" he shouted at her. "What the hell are you _doing?"_ Then he saw Kazuko's body on the bed. "Jesus God!" Riana had wondered if there were any Christians in NERV besides herself.

There were footsteps on the stairway. The security man instantly had his pistol pointed in that direction, but it was another man in a suit, along with a woman in casual clothes, and a male dressed like a garbage man. Riana remembered passing them both on the walk to Kazuko's, and remembered Misato's words: _for every one of your security detail that you do see, there's going to be two that you don't._ "Is Arashikaze all right, Hohiro?" the woman shouted.

"Yeah, she's all right, but this one isn't!" Hohiro—the security man who had saved Riana's life—was busy feeling for vital signs. "She's still alive, Kana, barely. Call an ambulance!"

The woman reached for her throat and spoke into a hidden mike. "This is Team Six. We need an ambulance, immediately." She paused. "No, Pilot Arashikaze is unharmed. This is for…" She looked up at Riana. "Who _is_ this?" she whispered.

"Kazuko Bishamon," Riana answered. "She's our principal at the school."

As Kana passed on the information, the garbageman inspected Riana's throat. "Going to have some bruises there, but you're going to be all right. What were you thinking?"

"I thought…I thought there was something wrong with Principal Bishamon. They were wearing gloves…I thought they were up to something. I didn't really think about what I was doing…"

"That's true," Hohiro snarled. "These men could've killed you, Arashikaze! If we hadn't—" Realization spread across his face. "You little shit. You _knew._ You _knew_ we would have to come protect you!"

"And she was right," the garbageman said. He seemed to be the one in charge. "An interesting gambit, Pilot. You knew you couldn't take on these fellows alone, so you broke in, knowing we would have to follow you. You took a big chance. That was brave—stupid, but brave."

Riana massaged her throat. "I fight Angels for a living. I'm already an idiot."

"No argument here," Hohiro remarked, which got him a elbow in the ribs from Kana as they untied Kazuko.

"Why would someone torture a middle school principal?" The garbageman asked; he was looking at Riana.

"I don't know. She was training me—martial arts, meditation, that sort of thing."

"Hm." He clearly wanted to say more, but was distracted by the other man in the suit. He had moved the two bodies on the floor to one side. "What happened to the guy in the coveralls, Shin?"

"He's dead. I can't tell what killed him. If I didn't know better, I'd say he suffered a massive coronary."

 _I killed him,_ Riana thought to herself. _I don't know how, but I killed him._ She was surprised to find herself not feeling guilty at all. He was, after all, going to kill her. _A few months shy of fifteen, and I've already killed two people…_

Then the sirens went off. Everyone in the room froze for a moment. The low howl of the sirens could mean only one thing, but it was Hohiro who articulated it. "Oh, shit." He used the English words. "Angels."


	8. Heart of Courage

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: Once more, work intervened and pretty much shut down creative writing for over a month. Every semester, it seems to get busier! So I'm going to make up for my long abscence with two chapters tonight._

 _The Geofront_

 _Tokyo-3, Japan_

 _10 November 2016_

The drive through Tokyo-3 was the fastest and most hair-raising drive Riana Arashikaze had ever experienced, and she had driven with Misato Katsuragi. The NERV security team's SUV screeched to a halt outside a nondescript, little building marked WATER TREATMENT PLANT—DO NOT ENTER with the skull and crossbones of a poison warning plastered beneath the words. Shin—still dressed as a garbageman—rapidly keyed the door open. Already, in the distance, Riana could hear explosions. She turned in that direction, but Shin shoved her towards the door. "You'll get to see all you want later! Get in there!" Kana followed them; Hohiro had gone with Kazuko to the hospital. She spoke into a radio. "This is Team Six—we're at Linear Rail Route 18. The pilot will be at NERV in ten minutes." They raced down a flight of stairs and reached a blast door that Shin opened as well. As they stepped out onto a dusty train platform, Kana handed the radio to Riana. "It's Major Katsuragi. She wants to talk to you."

"This is Riana," she said hesitantly into the radio.

"Riana, it's Misato. Listen, that Angel has already reached the Komagatake defense line. Asuka's in EVA-02; she'll make the intercept. Rei's getting into EVA-01." Riana blinked at that, but then remembered; Shinji had quit. Rei's EVA-00 was still under repair. "We'll get you up to backstop both of them as soon as we can. I'll have someone meet you at the tram station here at the Geofront—you'll change on the way to the Eva. Got it?"

"Yeah." Riana sensed that this wasn't the time to ask about Kazuko. "Won't let you down, ma'am."

"Good girl. See you in a few." The line clicked off, and she handed the radio back to Kana as the high-speed tram hissed to a halt next to them.

The inside was clean and looked barely used. Getting to the Geofront didn't take long, and no one said anything. Riana tried to calm herself; her heart threatened to beat out of her chest. She was still coming down off of the adrenaline from nearly being killed in Kazuko's apartment, and now she was going into yet another fight. _At least this time I've got a gun…I hope._ She wondered what this Angel could bring to the table. _At least this time there won't be a friend inside of it. Seems awfully soon for one to show up, though._ _Then again, they're not on a timetable or anything. Going to be weird going into a fight without Shinji. Hope he got out of town okay. Dammit, we need more pilots._ She blew out her breath. _Okay, magic powers. You already bailed me out earlier, now I need you again._

The train arrived at a more familiar station, one she had been in before. They were in the Geofront now. The doors were barely open before Shin shoved her out of them. "Kana, go with her," he ordered. "Pilot, go win!" Riana had to grin at him, and threw Shin a thumbs-up.

Waiting at the far end of the corridor was a NERV tech, next to the elevator that led to the Eva launch bays; Kana and Riana dashed to him, and he tossed Riana her plugsuit, then handed her the gray interface headset clips. They entered the elevator as Riana pulled her hair back and put on the clips. She hesitated for a moment, but decided there was nothing for it: she stripped in front of Kana as the elevator descended, and with the security woman's help, struggled into the plugsuit. She had just pressurized it when the elevator doors opened. "I can take it from here," she told Kana.

"Might as well go the rest of the way!" Kana said. "I've never seen the launch bays!"

They had just left the elevator when the Geofront shook, as if the entire complex had been picked up and rattled. Kana fell to the floor; Riana ended up slammed against the wall. The shock passed; there wasn't a second one. "What the hell was that?" they asked at the same time, and Riana added, somewhat unnecessarily, "Something hit the Geofront!"

The doors at the other end of this corridor opened, and there were now a dozen NERV techs who dashed out. They picked up Riana and began actually carrying her to the launch bay. "Thanks!" she yelled back to Kana.

"Good luck!" Kana yelled back.

* * *

The techs deposited Riana in the entry plug, where she ran through a quick prelaunch checklist, as the plug was inserted into EVA-03A. "Riana, are you set?" Misato's voice came through her radio pickup as the plug began to fill with LCL. There was no longer any hesitation on Riana's part: she gulped down the LCL as if it was water and she was thirsty. _Didn't even gag this time,_ she thought as the LCL rose over her head.

"I'm set," she said as soon as the plug locked into the Eva.

"The Angel is designated Zeruel. That blast you felt was it taking out eighteen layers of armor plate between us and the surface."

"Oh, shit," Riana murmured.

"Pretty much," Misato agreed. "There's going to be no time for a surface intercept. We're deploying Asuka to the floor of the Geofront. You'll follow as soon as we can get you to a launch track. You're Asuka's backup."

Riana flipped on the intertial navigation system and watched the gyros align, even though there was not much use for it on such a short trip; it was muscle memory. "What happened to Rei?"

"We're having some trouble linking her up with 01. She'll be along directly."

"Roger that." Riana brought up her weapons list. The missile magazine was loaded and the sonic glaive was in its holster on EVA-03A's back. She was as ready as she could be, with one exception. "Misato, I'm going to need more than my missiles and the glaive, I think…"

It was Ritsuko Akagi who answered. "There will be weapons on the surface, Riana."

"Roger," Riana repeated. "EVA-03A, ready for launch."

Her Eva shook slightly as the personnel bridges and various hookups fell away from the mecha, then a rumble as tracks carried her to the launch rails. Riana was surprised to find her heart rate had returned to normal; her palms were no longer clammy inside the plugsuit gloves. It was routine now. Hundreds of simulations and three battles had made it so. She flexed her fingers and put them on the control sticks, careful to keep her fingers off any buttons or the triggers, so she would not accidentally hit them when the Eva was launched. _Any time now…there we go._ The G-forces pressed her down and back into her seat as the catapult fired, propelling her upwards, but she didn't feel fear or exhilaration. _Another day at the office. Let's see how this one goes._ The thought that she might be minutes from her death did not enter Riana's mind: they would win, as they always had, somehow. When the catapult stopped, she was on the forested floor of the Geofront.

Riana whispered a quick prayer, then moved out. She keyed her radio. "Hey, Asuka." The urgency of the moment caused her to ignore callsigns. "I'm here."

A window appeared to her right, and Asuka stared out, a smile on her face. "Yeah, I see you, Sister. Get behind me. Cover me when I reload against this bastard."

"You got it." Riana obediently moved over behind and to Asuka's left, ceding command to the other girl; Asuka was senior and merited it. In any case, Asuka's Eva could penetrate Zeruel's AT field; Riana's likely could not.

When she got there, Riana saw that Ritsuko had not been kidding about weapons. An arsenal surrounded Asuka: assault rifles that looked like human-sized ones, but fired depleted 90 millimeter uranium shells with electromagnetic propulsion; handheld rocket launchers that would fire a missile capable of leveling a city block; a gatling gun half the size of her mecha that would spew shells at 4200 rounds a minute; various melee weapons from naginatas to battleaxes. Asuka already had two assault rifles in hand. Riana, with a wry grin, picked up the gatling gun. EVA-03A's servomotors whined in protest, but she got it into firing position. "Bad- _ass,_ " she laughed to herself.

The Geofront rumbled again, though the rumble felt more like a mild earthquake than the shaking they had felt earlier. The rumble was followed by an explosion, and Riana watched in shock as the ceiling of the Geofront—half hidden in shadow, where the tall buildings of Tokyo-3 had descended to—bulged inwards for a moment, then opened up in a shower of dust, shattered concrete, and entire blocks of steel armor and parts of buildings. It fell well away from them, luckily, as some of the pieces would have crushed the Evas. The dust cleared after a moment, and surrounded by still-falling rubble, was Zeruel.

* * *

Riana supposed she should be used to the Angels' bizarre appearance by now, but it was still strange and alien, and not really that frightening. Zeruel looked like a slightly overweight statue of a human that had not quite been finished: it had no arms or legs. The head was centered in a thick neck and cowl, and to Riana, resembled a clown face, with empty eyesockets but the same kind of smile. It was colored a mix of black and white, with orange panels and a red circle in its center. _Bingo, the core. Maybe I'll get a crack at it, if Asuka can knock down its AT field._

"Hell, who needs Shinji?" Asuka laughed aloud. "I can handle this all on my own." She raised both assault rifles and let fly. " _Come on, fucker!"_ she shouted in German.

Asuka's aim was true, Riana could see. The tracer shells tracked into the Angel and marched down towards its core—or would have, had they not been stopped by glowing orange hexagons. "AT field," Riana breathed.

Asuka did not reply, but kept firing, screaming maledictions in four languages at Zeruel. She fired until the barrels of the assault rifles glowed with heat, but the weapons had about as much effect as her cursing. Zeruel seemed to ignore the hits as it floated down to just above the forest, where it hovered. Asuka abruptly ceased fire as the rifles ran out of ammunition. "Next!" she shouted, and reached back for the missile launchers.

Riana stepped up and opened fire with the Gatling gun. It first chewed up ground and trees in front of the Angel, then sent rounds flying wild over its head as the barrels rose. Riana gritted her teeth and forced the control sticks back down to compensate. Now the shells began hitting Zeruel, but they were no more effective than Asuka's fire. It did not even turn in her direction, nor did it move forward. Asuka was back in the fight in seconds, filling the Geofront with fire and thunder as she fired the rocket launchers. Riana ceased firing, but Asuka screamed, "Keep shooting, Riana, you dumbass!"

"Give me a minute, dammit!" Riana shouted back. She moved out further to the left, opening the range, forcing Zeruel to choose between targets—if it ever deigned to do something. It still floated there, almost as if it was bored, even as Riana opened fire again. There was a train of ammunition nearly a mile long leading to the Gatling; she could fire this for at least another three minutes. "We're not doing anything to it!" she yelled. A quick glance towards the Geofront pyramid behind them: still no Rei and EVA-01.

"No shit!" Asuka was now out of rockets, dropped the smoking launchers, and picked up another pair of assault rifles—the only other ones. Once Asuka ran through the rifles' magazines and Riana ran out of Gatling ammunition, they would be down to melee weapons. _Maybe that's what the Angel wants,_ Riana thought, _it wants to take us on hand-to-hand; maybe they've got some sort of weird sense of honor—_

And then, suddenly, Zeruel responded.

Riana had noted the banner-like protrusions that hung from Zeruel's shoulders, but she thought they were some sort of decoration, like battle flags. Without warning, the banners fell downwards, extending like two rolls of toilet paper—Riana could not help but make the comparison—until they reached the ground. Then they just as quickly flew upwards, stiffened, and extended faster than her eyes could follow, aimed straight for Asuka's shoulders. There was not even time to yell a warning before both of Zeruel's "arms" cleaved straight downwards. EVA-02's arms were taken off in an instant, with such velocity that they actually hung in the air for a moment, forced away from the Eva; they then fell to the Geofront floor, the guns still firing as they landed.

Riana's fingers fell away from the triggers in horror as gouts of purple fluid shot from EVA-02's shoulders like sprays of blood. There was silence for a moment, then Asuka, over the radio feed, let out a small gasp, which then rose to an anguished scream, as if her own arms had been severed—and linked to her Eva as she was, they might as well have been.

Riana froze. She knew she needed to open fire; Zeruel's arms might be retracting back to its shoulders like tape measures, but it could lash out again just as fast. Her fingers would not obey her brain. _What…what the hell do I…I do…_

Asuka made up her mind for her. The screams turned into a strangled shout in German: "I'll kill you! _I'LL KILL YOU!"_ EVA-02 shot forward, still spraying its blood from its mangled shoulders.

Riana found her voice. "Asuka, don't!" Her fingers finally gripped the sticks and raised the Gatling again, but Asuka's speed was such that she ran through EVA-03A's sights. The crosshairs projected on Riana's windscreen pulsed green; she could not fire even if she wanted to, as her Eva's sensors recognized a friendly mecha.

Then Zeruel struck again, with the same speed, and this time, it went for EVA-02's head. The two arms swung together and decapitated the Eva cleanly. Another fountain of blood shot upwards; at the apex of the fountain was EVA-02's head, which slammed into the ground at Riana's feet.


	9. Alone

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: Part II of tonight's chapter._

 _The Geofront_

 _Tokyo-3, Japan_

 _10 November 2016_

Riana was surprised at her own reaction. One part of her brain had never really come out of shock, and it retreated back into it, where it was safe. Instinct took over instead. Hours of training, hours of Ritsuko's needling and shouting, hours of constant pressure and stress finally paid off. There was no fear. Zeruel had barely begun moving forward, past the mutilated remains of EVA-02, before she raised the Gatling gun again and opened fire. The six barrels roared to life and hit true. None of the shells actually struck, stopped by the Angel's AT field, and for a moment, Riana thought it was just going to ignore her and move past. Then Zeruel stopped, hovered in place, and made a quarter-turn to the right to face her. It regarded her for a moment, and Riana could swear that it cocked its head slightly, like a dog confronted with something it did not understand.

"Status on EVA-01?" Riana heard herself say, as if she was no longer in control of her own voice.

"No good," Misato replied. "Rei's coming out with Unit Zero."

EVA-00 was damaged, Riana knew; still missing an arm from the fight with Bardiel. Still, it was better than nothing, and probably better than her. "I'll buy Rei some time," was her only response, and Riana fired again. The Gatling ran through about a hundred shells and then went silent, its barrels still spinning and smoking, out of ammunition. Zeruel picked that time to counterattack. The banners fell down, rose, and headed for her chest.

And slowed down.

Riana could see them coming—stiffened, the edges glittering like diamonds, a beautiful white death. Her hands and legs moved without conscious thought: EVA-03A ducked underneath the two slicing arms, which slid through the space she had been in. She threw the empty Gatling aside as she spun aside; Zeruel's arms retracted back through where Riana had been, where it would have sliced her Eva in half. The arms returned to their shoulders, then shot out again, but this time Riana had drawn the sonic glaive. Once more, Zeruel seemed to move much slower than it had against Asuka, and Riana swung the glaive to try and slice off one of the Angel's arms. The head of the glaive was cut off for her troubles, but that was the extent of the damage.

"Hur…hurry," Riana puffed out; her lungs felt as if they were on fire again, like she was being choked again. "I…don't…know…how…long…I…can…keep…this…up."

She dodged back towards the pyramid, to put her back to something, just as she would fighting her grandmother; Rissa loved to flank her opponents. Zeruel did not seem to care as the arms retracted again. This time, they did not come out, but they did not have to: its eyes sparkled and began to glow.

Suddenly time snapped back into its normal course. "Riana, get out of there!" Misato shrilled. Riana threw EVA-03A to one side as Zeruel's eyes shot two white-hot bolts. Neither touched the Eva, but the shockwave of their passing, caused by vaporized air, slammed her aside. EVA-03A slid backwards and fell into the large lake that encompassed half the Geofront.

The LCL saved her from harm, and Riana grabbed the control sticks to try and lever herself upright; Zeruel might have been firing at her or the Geofront pyramid, but either way, it was not likely to give her a second chance. "Direct hit, third foundation plate!" she heard Makoto Hyuga say; someone, probably Misato, had left the channel open. "Final armor layer is melted through!"

"The main shaft's exposed!" Misato shouted. "There's nothing between him and us now!" Then the link clicked off.

Her arms felt like they were immersed in mud rather than LCL, and Riana felt like she was struggling to breathe. Faster than it felt, EVA-03A rose to its feet. Zeruel, however, had more imminent problems, for Rei had finally arrived.

* * *

EVA-00 dropped to a crouch after it cleared the launch rails, then sprang forward. Riana saw that it was unarmed; there was no weapon that she could see. Rei was launching herself at Zeruel in a flat run, but she covered the ground faster than the Angel could turn. Then Riana saw what was cradled in EVA-00's right hand, clasped against the mecha's torso: a canister the size of a SUV, painted green with a yellow stripe around the canister's head, marked N2.

"Oh shit!" Riana screamed. She felt rooted to the ground as she watched Rei Ayanami turn herself and her Eva into a gigantic kamikaze. EVA-00's right arm shot out, grasping the N2 bomb like a spear; Rei evidently intended to bury it in Zeruel's mouth. She might have, but abruptly the Angel's AT field came to life, extending outwards to either side with enough force to uproot trees and cut a bow wave through the lake; had Riana been a few dozen meters to the right, the AT field would have neatly bisected her.

The air itself seemed supercharged to Riana, even through the layers of her Eva's armor and the LCL. "AT field to maximum," Rei reported, as if discussing the weather, but there was steel behind the calm words. Rei was, to Riana's surprise, angry.

Zeruel's AT field shimmered, then bent inward as Rei began forcing the N2 bomb through it by main force, a contest between fields that EVA-00 began to win. Suddenly, the Eva's arm burst through, and the N2 bomb slammed against Zeruel's core.

Riana threw EVA-03A backwards into the lake. The lake was entirely artificial, and deep. It was enough to save her life as the N2 mine went off. As she sank downwards, Riana watched the fireball roar over the waters, then the shockwave hit, amplified by the water. It bombarded EVA-03A like a physical thing, causing Riana's ears to pop and her instruments to flicker, but the tough armor held. The wave passed.

EVA-03A's entry plug was pressurized, so even any leaks would not drown Riana, but the mecha was not really designed for underwater combat. Luckily, Ritsuko had thought of such an occasion, and Riana remembered a lecture from the doctor. She reached down a pulled a yellow handle beneath the left-hand instrument panel. Explosive bolts blew off around EVA-03A's waist, and flotation bags quickly inflated with compressed air. The Eva stopped sinking and rose to the surface; Riana marched it out of the lake. It was not terribly dignified: EVA-03A looked as if it was wearing a giant orange inner tube.

What had been a forest was now a sea of blasted trees, dropped outwards from the epicenter of the N2 mine's detonation. Above her, a mushroom cloud slowly roiled over the distant roof of the Geofront as the heat from the explosion continued to rise. EVA-03A's radio popped into life. "Riana, are you there?" Misato asked.

"Yeah, still here," Riana said. She could breathe now. Her monitors were back online; other than dented armor plates and a shoulder baffle that was bent to one side, the tough Eva had survived another ordeal. "I'm good."

"Can you see Unit Zero? Or the Angel?"

"Not yet…still a lot of smoke." She picked her way through the burned forest; out of the corner of one eye, Riana could see the destroyer that NERV normally docked in the lake over on its side, nearly capsized by the shockwave. "I see something…" A shape loomed out of the smoke. "Rei?" Riana called out.

Zeruel's arms shot out of the cloud. It was not perfect, and even an Angel struggled against the power of a N2 mine: its targeting was not true. Only one of the arms connected, but it was enough to take off EVA-03's left arm at its elbow. Riana felt nothing, as she was not neurally linked to her mecha as Asuka and Rei were, but just being hit was enough to spin her Eva around; once more, she fell to the ground. Zeruel seemed to accept that she was out of the fight: as the smoke finally cleared, she saw it turn away and disappear through the hole it had made in the pyramid.

"It…it was Zeruel," Riana radioed. "Target remains…repeat, target remains. It's headed into the pyramid." She spotted EVA-00. It was down, crumpled in a heap, either from the explosion or from Zeruel. "Rei's down. Repeat, Rei's down. EVA-00's down."

"Get a recovery team out there now!" Misato exclaimed. "Riana, get out! Get out of the Geofront! Get to the surface!"

"The Angel's still active—"

"There's nothing you can do now." It was Ritsuko's voice this time. "Get out, Riana. There may still be time."

"Like hell I will." Riana got EVA-03A back to its feet. Now she was mad. She wondered what had possessed Asuka and Rei to charge Zeruel. Now she knew. It was sheer rage, combined with frustration. "There's got to be something that can kill this thing."

* * *

She moved to the hole. EVA-03A was slightly limping; the small bits of damage here and there were beginning to take effect. The Angel evidently knew where it was going: it descended down a long metal shaft, the main ventilation shaft for Central Dogma. It would end up separated from NERV's bridge only by a concrete wall. Riana understood that this Angel, at least, was intelligent. It had eliminated, as far as it knew, all opposition from the Evas and NERV's defenses. Now it would decapitate NERV's leadership—kill Commander Ikari, Ritsuko, Misato, everyone. After that, it would do something, Riana was not sure what, but it was something everyone feared. The solution was simple, really. It had to be stopped. Riana checked quickly for any surviving weapons, but there were none. Even her glaive was gone, and at the angle she was at, her missile battery would be useless. Riana Arashikaze did have one weapon left, however: EVA-03A itself.

"I'm out of my fucking mind," she mused, but stood her Eva at the lip of the shaft. She gripped both sides of the hole. "Please, God," she murmured, "forgive me for what I have done and what I have failed to do. And make me hit that thing. Amen." She hastily crossed herself.

And then Riana threw EVA-03A into space.

Zeruel floated down the shaft—quickly enough, but almost leisurely. Riana fell like a meteor; the distance between them vanished in an instant as EVA-03A crashed into the Angel from above. There was no warning or remotely any finesse: it was just a collision at nearly two hundred kilometers an hour. The sheer weight of the steel Eva caused both it and Zeruel to plummet down the shaft, where they landed at the bottom with enough force to collapse both walls around it.

Riana had been propelled out of her seat with the impact, with enough force to break the safety restraints; had it not been for the LCL, she would have been rammed into the top of the entry plug, which would have killed her. The shock was still enough that her head hit the ceiling with a bong. Her vision blurred; woozily, she knew on some level that she had a concussion, and maybe something worse. EVA-03A lay halfway through one of the walls, sprawled bonelessly, one leg at an odd angle and the other gone beneath the knee. Most of her monitors were dead, but the windscreen projection was still intact. It showed Zeruel face down. "Ha…" Riana snickered. She tasted blood in her mouth and spit some into the LCL. Slowly, she managed to hook her feet underneath the instrument panel and resumed her seat. Shaking, she gripped the control sticks. "Fuck you, Angel. I win."

Then Zeruel rose.

It more rotated into position than sat up. Riana tried to do the same, but realized that her Eva was against something. Somehow, the neural links were still intact, and as she turned to see what the mecha was caught on, the Eva's head rotated as well. Riana realized that EVA-03A's head and neck were actually up against the bridge tower of Central Dogma. Misato, Ritsuko, Maya and the others stared down at her.

It was probably the concussion, but Riana could have sworn that Zeruel looked very upset. It faced her and the bridge tower, and its eyes sparkled.

"Shiiit." Riana drew out the word. She reached for the trigger to fire her last weapon—her missiles, if they had survived—and wondered what the command was to detonate her reactor, then remembered that it was a fusion reactor and simply would not explode. Her fingers would not grip the trigger. Darkness closed around her vision, and her eyelids fluttered. The Angel's eyes filled with light, rather pretty light, Riana thought, and she cursed again, because she was going to die and she wouldn't even get a chance to see it. "Na' again. I'ma gonna get killed again…not…fair…"

In slow motion, the wall to her right exploded inwards. A purple and black fist shot outwards and caught Zeruel in the jaw. The lights went out and the Angel staggered, then went down. The rest of the wall shattered and collapsed as EVA-01 finally arrived. The last thing Riana heard was a scream of rage, one very familiar. "Huh…Shinji." Riana grinned through bloody teeth. "Good to…see you…"

Then the black closed in, and Riana gratefully sank down into its velvety softness.


	10. Eyes of a Stranger

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: How about that? Three chapters in 48 hours. Just in case I don't update again for awhile. Though this part now reads as "complete," of course there will be other chapters. Riana's story is far from over._

Riana awoke to a somewhat unfamiliar ceiling.

It was familiar enough, in that bathroom ceilings tend to look the same most places in the world. She felt very warm and light, as if her body was floating…and then realized that it was. Riana looked down, and saw that she was in a bath. Then her head began to pound. She reached back and found a knot there, and her hand came away bloody.

 _What…what am I doing here? Did they take me out of the Eva? Is this the hospital? I feel weird._ Those thoughts raced through her aching head. Riana struggled to get up out of the bath, but after two abortive attempts, finally got to her feet. Her body felt off, somehow. She was naked. _Durrh, Riana...you were taking a bath._ Steam made the bathroom warm at least. _Why would they put me in a bath? That doesn't seem right…and my head's bleeding a little…_ Riana saw blood on the white porcelain of the tub. A good amount of water was on the floor. _Did…did I fall?_ She glanced around. There were towels on the washstand, over the toilet, and decorations on the wall. Riana had been in NERV's infirmary enough times, but this bathroom lacked the hospital antiseptic smell. It smelled rather nice, actually. There were stacks of shampoo, body cleanser, even shaving cream—too much for one person. _Misato's apartment, maybe? Maybe they took me there…how long have I been out?_

The room tilted for a moment, and Riana steadied herself. She took stock. She had not woken up next to a blood-red ocean on a beach filled with dead bodies. She was alive, which was always a plus. Since she was alive and in a rather pleasant smelling bathroom, next to a warm tub, that likely meant that Zeruel was dead and they had triumphed again. _Shinji came back!_ Riana remembered in a rush. _That was him in EVA-01! Ha…good old Shinji. Saved our ass again. Boy, Asuka's going to be pissed, and it'll be glorious. And Shinji's dad? Won't that light a fire under Commander Ikari's ass, though?_

Riana grabbed a towel from the rack and wrapped it around herself—or began to. She stopped as she looked down at her naked body. She looked a bit thinner, her skin a bit darker, but something was wrong. Then she realized what it was.

"My God! What's happened to my _boobs?!"_ Riana shouted, and swiped a hand across the mirror. No, her eyes were not paying tricks on her. She'd been somewhat oversized for a teenager, and now she was rather flat. Then she looked again. Her eyes. Riana's eyes were dark blue.

The eyes that stared back at her were also blue, but they were shaped differently, and the shade was all wrong.

Slowly, her hands went up to her hair. The color was right there, too—it was a dark brown—but it was cut short, like Rei Ayanami's, with the bangs coming down to frame the eyes, instead of long and parted in the middle like it should be.

"That's not me…" Riana whispered in horror. "That's not me." She clutched the towel, quickly wrapped it around herself, and opened the door. Her vision swam, and she nearly fell, but she got out into the corridor. It was a house, not the NERV infirmary. Someone lived here. She could smell coffee. "Is there someone there?" she shouted. "Who's there?" She took two steps forward, staggered, then propped herself against the wall.

A woman dressed in a housecoat came around the corner from what Riana supposed was the kitchen. She looked strangely familiar. There was something about the face, and the hair, but Riana could not be certain. The woman was holding a coffee cup, but she hurriedly set it aside on a small table in the hallway, and rushed over to Riana. "Are you all right?" the woman asked.

"I…don't know…" Riana stammered. "Something's wrong with me..."

"Dear, get in here!" the woman yelled. Riana sank down to the carpet, guided by the woman's hands; her hands were very soft, she thought in passing. She heard a chair slide back, the rattle of china, heavy footfalls on a tiled floor.

Gendo Ikari came around the corner. He, at least, looked correct—black slacks, black jacket with yellow trim, red shirt, red-tinted glasses, Lincolnesque beard. His expression, however, shifted from the faintly disapproving one that was familiar, to one of genuine concern, which was not. "Yui!" he exclaimed. "What's wrong with her?"

"I don't know!" the woman replied— _Yui?_ Riana thought. She'd heard that name somewhere before. Someone had mentioned it at NERV. She reached for the memory, but it remained just out of reach. "She just came out of the bathroom—Gendo, she's bleeding!" Yui's hand now had blood on it as well. "She must've slipped and hit her head!"

"I'll call an ambulance," Gendo said, and was gone, back around the corner. Yui eased Riana to the carpet, careful to keep her head steady. Dimly, Riana remembered that Yui Ikari had been a doctor. Someone had told her that. Her eyebrows beetled together in confusion. _That can't be right,_ she thought. _That can't be right._

"Look at me." Yui cradled Riana's head, keeping it as immobile as possible. "Mana, look at me. You're going to be okay. You hear me? Don't fall asleep! You have to stay awake!"

Riana tried, but the darkness crept back like an old friend. Her vision began to dim again. "Mana?" She tried to shake her head, but Yui's hands kept her from doing so. "My name is Riana."

Yui smiled down at her, and even through the haziness, Riana knew who that smile reminded her of. "Don't talk, Mana. Stay with me."

Riana's hand came up to gently caress the side of Yui's face. "You're Yui Ikari." Riana smiled. "You're Shinji's mom."

"That's right, Mana. Now—"

"S'funny," Riana mumbled. "You're supposed to be dead." Then the curtain fell and the world blinked out


End file.
